Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
A GLITTERING celebration marked the relaunch of MTC Vodafone and under the new name Zain.
It signalled a new global thrust by the group, with plans to move its headquarters from Kuwait to either Bahrain or Dubai.
Group chief commercial officer Tito Alai said the name Zain was chosen for its simplicity, memorability and ease of pronunciation across the global marketplace and, as an added bonus, Zain was found to be rich in positive connotations.
“For example, in Arabic, Zain means ‘beautiful, good and wonderful’, in Latin it means ‘dark horse’ and it has many positive meanings in other cultures in Africa, Asia, Europe and beyond. It tested extremely well among cross sections of the potential global audience,” he said.
Chief executive Dr Saad Al Barrak said the company’s success in Bahrain and elsewhere had given it the confidence to re-brand worldwide.
“Bahrain has been the first to re-brand itself, where MTC-Vodafone Bahrain will also now be known as Zain.
“In fact, the tremendous success that we have had in Bahrain over the last nearly four years is one of the main reasons why we have taken this extremely bold step of re-branding ourselves.”
He said the decision to move to either Bahrain or Dubai had been prompted by easy accessibility to global markets and the extremely friendly business environment in these two countries.
“The final decision is almost made. We shall reveal it in the next few weeks, possibly before the end of October,” said Dr Al Barrak.
He said the third contender, the Dutch capital, Amsterdam, had already been knocked out of contention.
“Bahrain has one of the most conducive business environments. Our tremendous success here has demonstrated that fact. We owe a lot to Bahrain and our customers here,” said Dr Al Barrak.
It is no small wonder that Bahrain has been the fastest growing market for the company, he said.
“When we started in Bahrain, we were very small globally. We have grown thanks to what we achieved in Bahrain. The world market has grown, but Bahrain has given us the confidence to expand,” said Dr Al Barrak.
He said the Zain Group was now the biggest private company in the Arab world and globally the fourth biggest telecommunications service provider in terms of value.
“We are not through yet. There is more to come and, as usual, we are looking at Bahrain to give us a solid foundation.”
He said the logic behind the make-over was that they wanted the brand to be known globally.
“We had different names in different places but now we shall be known as Zain in all our operations in 21 countries,” said Dr Al Barrak.
He said the company’s operations in Kuwait, Jordan and Sudan would also immediately come under the new name, while its operations in 14 African countries, Iraq and Lebanon would change later.
