Vodafone's all-women Angel Stores initiative for Woman's Day

As the stage sets for celebrating womanhood with this year's International Woman's Day on March 8, Vodafone India, one of India's leading telecommunications service providers, is leading the celebrations by taking its Angel Stores - a novel initiative toward women empowerment, national. By the end of this week, Vodafone will have 15 Angel stores fully operational across the country. The Vodafone Angel Store, a first of its kind retail concept store, is completely managed and run by women employees. This initiative is in line with Vodafone's commitment of encouraging diversity and inclusion at workplace by creating suitable opportunities for its employees, enabling them to maximize their potential.

Marten Pieters, Managing Director & CEO, Vodafone India said, "As a company with one of the largest exclusive retail footprint in the country, we feel responsible to lead by example. We strongly believe that economic empowerment of women is a great building block in social development. At Vodafone India, we have always put great emphasis on equal rights and opportunities for our employees and our policies encourage women employees to aspire for and achieve their career ambitions. The Angel stores are a part of Vodafone's commitment to provide our women employees with one of the most secure and productive work environment. Additionally, our women customers feel more welcomed while visiting the store. Going forward, we will continue to expand the Vodafone Angel Store network across more locations."

Spread across 13 states in India, Vodafone Angel Stores is now a 15-outlet strong network with stores operating in Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Goa, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Shillong, Bhubaneshwar, Jaipur, Agra, Mysore, Chennai, Lucknow, Kolkata and Hyderabad, providing a national footprint. The 16th store will be opening in Kerala on the occasion of International Women's Day. In each of these locations, the Vodafone Angel store has the distinction of being the first of its kind retail outlet with only women staff members, including security, pantry staff, customer service resources as well as management level personnel.

Research and customer feedback has revealed that the Angel Stores help in improving the quality of customer service as women with their character traits of greater patience and empathy are able to act and help in speedy resolution. More significantly, latest findings within Vodafone indicate higher productivity and performance parameters recorded by the Vodafone Angel Stores, across locations. The Vodafone Angel Stores have helped raised the bar for excellence in customer service, further enhancing the reputation of the company to provide unique and differentiated experience to its customers.