Raj Heda promoted to GM at Vi, moves back to Mumbai

Mumbai is calling, and Raj Heda is answering. The brand marketing veteran has just been elevated to gm – brand and communications at Vodafone Idea, marking both a promotion and a homecoming to the city he calls his own. After three years and five months of grinding through the AGM ranks in Pune, Heda now steps into the corner office of one of India’s most fiercely contested telecom battlegrounds.

The promotion caps a run that reads like a masterclass in brand resuscitation. At Vi, Heda spearheaded the 5G rollout and the network upgrade campaigns (L900/L2100) across the MnG circle, campaigns that were not just noisy but effective, delivering a four basis points uplift in non-user consideration scores alongside gains in total and spontaneous awareness. In an industry where subscriber churn is brutal and brand loyalty is fickle, these are not small wins.

Before Vi, Heda cut his teeth across some of India’s biggest financial brands. At Axis Bank, he ran acquisition and cross-sell campaigns through the pandemic’s darkest days, engaging over 1.5 lakh customers digitally when physical touchpoints had all but vanished. At InCred Financial Services, he built demand funnels and stakeholder campaigns from scratch as chief marketing manager. Earlier stints at HDFC Bank and T.I.M.E. rounded out a career built on ATL, BTL and digital fluency long before “omnichannel” became a boardroom buzzword.

What stands out is the consistency. Whether selling loans, exam coaching or spectrum upgrades, Heda’s playbook stays the same: sharp targeting, cost-conscious campaigns and a relentless focus on measurable brand lift. Now, with a seat at Vi’s top table and Mumbai as his base, the real test begins, proving that brand can still move the needle in one of the world’s most price-sensitive telecom markets.