India will celebrate International Women’s Day on 8 March 2014. To join the celebration, Vodafone India said the telecom operator is aiming to bring women to head at least 25 operational zones out of 95 in the country.
The mobile service provider currently has 17 out of 95 zones headed by women. Women employee base will be approximately 20 percent of the total workforce in Vodafone India.
The statistics is significant for a country like India where the India government under the Congress rule and opposed by BJP and other parties are not willing to offer 33 percent quote in legislatures. Women Reservation Bill did not get support in the Parliament which has the presence of senior leaders such as Sonia Gandhi, Sushma Swaraj, Meera Kumar, Ambika Sony, Jayanthi Natarajan, etc.
The journey has already started, the mobile service provider said on Friday. For instance, hiring rate of women in Vodafone India has gone up to 40 percent of hires as compared with 11.5 percent of hires in March 2013.
Women love to talk. 32 percent of Vodafone India’s customer base comprises of women. Earlier, BlackBerry India said its majority user base is women.
Ashok Ramchandran, director – Human Resources, Vodafone India said, “In our efforts to create a more balance work environment, while scouting for talent and expanding our talent search pool, we are giving first preference to women talent to build a more diverse workplace. Vodafone has always laid great emphasis on equal rights and opportunities for our employees and our policies encourage women employees to aspire for and achieve their career ambitions.”
On 3 September, 2013: Vodafone India launched the First Vodafone Angel store in Haryana at Yamuna Nagar. Angel Stores are Vodafone retail outlets managed and run entirely by women employees.
Vodafone India
In the third quarter of fiscal 2014, Vodafone service revenue increased 13.2 percent driven by customer growth, higher voice usage, improved voice pricing and increased data usage. Mobile customers increased by 4.9 million during the quarter giving a closing customer base of 160.4 million at 31 December 2013, up 8.8 percent on last year.
Vodafone data usage grew 117 percent, primarily due to a 38 percent increase in mobile internet users and a 65 percent increase in usage per customer. At 31 December 2013 active data customers totalled 45.7 million, including 5.2 million 3G subscribers.
