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Ringing Bells Freedom 251 mobile priced at Rs 251 has upset the entire industry, but also enthused hundreds of thousands of people across the country who are looking to get their hands on a dirt cheap smartphone that has fine specifications and features that would otherwise cost 10 times the advertised price. So, what is behind this stupendous exercise that has been labelled as a scam by some. Here are top 5 points to note:
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1. Ringing Bells Freedom 251 mobile: First of all, to the question of how Ringing Bells arrived at Freedom 251 price that turned it into the world's cheapest smartphone, the face of the company, President Ashok Chadha clarified that they did not get any subsidy by the government – this clarification comes in the face of the company having initially saying Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar would launch the mobile phone. He did not, but Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) veteran M M Joshi did.
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2. Ringing Bells Freedom 251 mobile: Chadha said mass production techniques and economies of scale would be used to ensure losses are not booked. “By going for Made in India components, we can save on the 13.8 per cent, also we will be selling online first and thus save the costs incurred on large distribution networks,” added Chadha.
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3. Ringing Bells Freedom 251 mobile: Showing his aggressive intent, Chadha said that Ringing Bells wants to capture nearly 30 per cent of the smartphone market by the end of the year – the market is saturated with top global and Indian companies who will pose stiff competition, but that part was ignored.
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4. Ringing Bells Freedom 251 mobile: The company has set up two pilot plants in Noida and Uttarakhand and claims to have a capacity of 5 lakh phones on these lines. Ringing Bells says that they are looking at an investment of Rs 230-250 crores on these plants.
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5. Ringing Bells Freedom 251 mobile: President Ashok Chadha said the funding of the 'Freedom251' mobile project would be met by the promoter family of the company that is 'engaged in agri-commodities business' in Uttar Pradesh.
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6. Ringing Bells Freedom 251 mobile: "Today the funding is from the promoters from the agri-belt and this is the capital of three generations," Chadha revealed. "The investment in a plant will be roughly Rs 250 crore. These are modular plants, you can yourself assess. With the volume, we are going to scale up each line. We are starting off with two plants and we expect to cascade this further as I unravel the right permutation from taxes point of view, particularly GST," Chadha added.
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7. Ringing Bells Freedom 251 mobile: Chadha highlighted the potential use of Freedom 251 mobile phone to empower citizens in rural and semi-urban areas. The need for such a device was felt due to the government looking to implement its Digital India policy, which looks to connect people across India with the policies being implemented by the government.
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8. Ringing Bells Freedom 251 mobile: Ashok Chadha said manufacturing cost of the phone is about Rs 2,500, which will be recovered through a series of measures like economies of scale, innovative marketing, reduction in duties and creating an ecommerce marketplace.
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9. Ringing Bells Freedom 251 mobile: However, in the wake of questions being raised about the entire scheme, government has put the company's financials and other aspects under the scanner. To this Ashok Chadha replied, "Yes, there was a visit from excise department and IT Department. Since we are planning to achieve milestones under Make in India, Skill India and Startup India. They issued us some guidelines for future and extended full support and cooperation."
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10. Ringing Bells Freedom 251 mobile specifications and features: The smartphone runs on Android 5.1, with a 4-inch display, a quad-core 1.3GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, and 8GB of storage (expandable to 32GB); it has a 3.2-megapixel primary and a 0.3-megapixel front camera; the device has 3G connectivity and has a 1.3GHz quad-core processor, 1GB RAM and 8GB internal memory and supports external memory cards of up to 32GB; the handset comes with pre-installed apps like Swachh Bharat, Women Safety, WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter, among others.
