Orange (India)

Orange (India)

The Orange brand in India, through a complicated set of mergers and divisions, was acquired and eventually retained by France Telecom-Orange Group; and currently operates as Orange Business Services India (OBS India).

On 14 February 2000, Hutchison Max - an Indian telecom joint venture majority owned by Hong Kong based Hutchison Whampoa introduced the brand in the country, through the rebranding of its existing Mumbai telecom circle Cell phone service - 'Max Touch', to 'Orange'. Shortly, issues arose concerning the ownership of the 'Orange' brand in India, when France Telecom in May 2000 purchased the worldwide rights for the brand. Hutchison Essar (earlier Hutchinson Max) ended using the brand in Jan 2006.

Orange returned back to the country in July 2007, as Orange Business Services India, when France Telecom acquired the enterprise network services and managed services business of GTL Ltd. Since then, OBS India has grown to become one of the country's major data connectivity solutions provider.

As of June 2012, it has a network with 13 point of presence (PoP) in the country and has offices in eight locations with over 2000 employees, offering business services to local as well as global enterprises in cloud computing, unified communications and collaboration. India houses one of the OBS's four major global service centers in Gurgaon.

OBS India traces its presence in India to 1969, when SITA, (Societe Internationale de Telecommunications Aeronautiques), was created to meet the need of the airline industry.