Sodexho India is now Sodexo India

Beginning September, 2008, Sodexho India is rolling out its new brand identity in India. Sodexho India is now Sodexo India, and it will sport a new brand logo in the market. All Meal Vouchers and Gift Vouchers issued from this month onwards would sport the new brand logo. Over the next 1 month, the new brand logo would be visible at all its affiliates across India. The Food and Facilities Management business of Sodexo has already started to deploy the new brand at its various client sites.

The change follows the Sodexo group decision to unify all its services under a common brand in all its markets. As the reference for Quality of Life services, the Group is renewing and revitalizing its brand to reinforce its single global brand strategy and support its transformation to a complete services company.

“The new visual identity represents a key stage in our development,” said Sodexo India (Service Vouchers & Cards) CEO, Ashish Talwar. “This evolution of our brand is a major step in the life of our company, designed to make Sodexo’s brand as a reference, enhancing its visibility and its value.”

“Sodexo’s single, global brand is part of our DNA. It will help us grow and progress toward our shared vision to become the premier global outsourcing expert in Quality of Life services”, said Johnpaul Dimech, Sodexo India (Food & Facilities Management) CEO. He added, “The Sodexo brand represents the promise of quality, innovation and continuous improvement, that the highly professional skills and expertise of our teams enable us to deliver to our clients and customers. In modernizing our brand and increasing its impact, we want to enhance the value of the brand for the benefit of all of our stakeholders. India is extremely strategic for Sodexo and we will continue to invest in highly skilled resources, training and development for our people and technology for the future. Based on our current growth and projections over the next four years, our employee numbers is expected to grow from 10,000 to over 40,000.”

Explaining the brand change, Mr Talwar said “Three major changes have been made as part of the brand evolution” They are:

* The logo has been streamlined and given a more contemporary graphic design that rejuvenates and revitalizes the brand. The typography is simpler, livelier and more compact. The star, long part of the Group’s visual identity, has been transformed from five stars to one. The single star symbolizes the performance and energy of Sodexo teams directed toward a common objective. This star differs from other stars, just as Sodexo stands out from its competitors.

* The letter “h” has been deleted from the name to support the Group’s strategic transformation into a Services company as the “h” is often associated with the hotel and foodservices business, particularly in Europe. In addition to increasing the brand’s scope and impact, the simpler, more dynamic name has been found to be easier to pronounce and spell for people around the world.

* Finally, the bar of the letter “x” is curved, like a smile—to evoke the Sodexo experience and a symbol of the countless gestures of attention performed daily by Sodexo teams to “make every day a better day.”

The group is represented in India, by its two subsidiaries, providing Food and Facilities Management Services, and Service Vouchers and Card Services. Sodexo in India has 10,000+ employees, and is a Rs.1000 Crore plus fast growing business with a dominating market share for all its offerings in a highly competitive market. The Indian operations were started in 1997. Since then, the company has established a strong brand and a reputation as the outsourcing expert in Quality of Life Services.

About Sodexo India Food, Facilities & Project Management Business:
Sodexo Food, Facilities & Project Management is an ISO 9001:2000 certified company that provides hard and soft services like preventive management, corrective management, operational maintenance, reliability centered maintenance, energy and waste management, utility management, project management and other support services such as helpdesk, housekeeping etc.

Present in 28 cities across India, over 10,000 Sodexo employees manage more than 23 million sq. feet area and serve over 85000 meals a day at over 300 client’s locations.

With operations spread across diverse segments such as Business & Industry, Manufacturing, Education and Healthcare; our comprehensive support services enable clients to focus on their core competency, secure in the knowledge that all its support functions run at maximum efficiency.

About Sodexo India Service Vouchers and Cards Business:
Today, over 1 million employees in over 7500 organisations in India use Sodexo vouchers everyday in a proprietary network of over 20,000 channel partners across 300 cities. Marketers in various industries use Sodexo Gift Vouchers as the ideal incentive tool for effectively executing countrywide promotional programs. Sodexo Gift Vouchers are also an important tool for rewarding and motivating employees in the corporate sector. State of the art Smartcard Services are giving a powerful benefits control tool to BPO and IT segments.

Sodexo Globally

SODEXO founded in 1966 by Pierre Bellon, a world leader in Food and Facilities Management services in most markets, with more than 342,000 employees on 29,000 sites in 80 countries. For Fiscal 2007, which closed August 31, 2007, SODEXO had revenues of 13.4 billion euro. Listed on Euronext Paris, the Group’s current market capitalization today was more than 6.0 billion euro.