In a big loss to Genesis BursonMarsteller, Vodafone India has handed over its public relations account to Adfactors Public Relations, effective from August 1, 2012. The move came after a two- month deliberation and scrutinising pitches from shortlisted five PR agencies. A Vodafone India official spokesperson told pitchonnet.com, “The evaluation was done by a cross functional team at Vodafone India. After two rounds of evaluation at different levels, on four parameters – Understanding of business needs, proposed solution, capacity/capability of the agency & presentation, Adfactors PR emerged as a unanimous choice.” [caption id="attachment_14554" align="alignleft" width="181"] Madan Bahal, Managing Director, Adfactors PR[/caption] Reacting to the win, Madan Bahal, Managing Director, Adfactors PR, told pitchonnet.com, “We are happy to be entrusted with the Vodafone PR mandate. The rigorous process followed by Vodafone in ultimately selecting Adfactors is a vindication of our capabilities to serve large and complex mandates in India.” The scope of work for Adfactors PR includes managing and execution of media relations activities for company initiatives both at corporate and circle level across India. Vodafone is the second largest telecom company in terms of revenues and user base in India and at the end of March 2012, as per TRAI, it had a user base of 150.48 million. The leader Bharti Airtel had a user base of 184.55 million. The telecom industry in India is going through a churn currently, particularly in wake of the 2G scam and cancellation of many licenses by the Supreme Court. The Department of Telecommunication (DoT) in July, this year, had recommended liberalisation of spectrum to be assigned through auction (which actually means fresh auction of 2G spectrum), pursuant to the February 2 judgement of the Supreme Court in the 2G case cancelling 122 2G licences. While Vodafone had not lost any licenses, Vodafone did challenge DoT’s guidelines with the Telecom Disputes Settlement Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT). However, the petition was dismissed by the tribunal, stating that no final decision was taken by the DoT. In such a scenario, the win by Adfactors is being looked as big, and Bahal is up for the challenge. “We are confident that we will prove to be a valuable partner to Vodafone in the challenging Indian telecom environment,” he said. The servicing team at Adfactors Public Relations will be led by Atul Takle, Senior Vice President, Adfactors PR. Adfactors Public Relations has 14 fully functional offices across India and 26 representatives across other major state hubs.