Ringing Bells, the makers of the world’s cheapest smartphone Freedom 251, is hosting an event later today where it will launch an LED TV. Just like the Freedom 251, the company has promised that this LED TV will be priced below Rs 10,000, which is way lower than market standards. Despite these claims, the spotlight is bound to remain on the elusive Freedom 251 smartphone.
Earlier this year, Ringing Bells revealed that over 70 million had registered for the smartphone, but it only had around 5 million Freedom 251 units to deliver — 2.5 million to users who booked online and another 2.5 million to those who booked offline. But the initially promised delivery date of June 30 came and went without any sign of the elusive device.
Things didn’t improve when Ringing Bells said that it would deliver only 200,000 Freedom 251 units in the first batch. If that wasn’t bad enough, the company yet again postponed the delivery date to July 7, and now claims to have only around 5,000 units to give in the first batch.
It is a huge drop from the promised 5 million to just 5,000 units, and it is difficult to trust a company in such circumstances. It also doesn’t well for the company that it has gone back on almost everything it had claimed in the past few months. At the onset it claimed to have the support of the government as a part of the Make in India initiative, but it turned out that the company was in no way part of the initiative. The company also claimed to have its finances in order and using economics of scale model it would be able to fulfill its promises.
Goel had earlier also claimed that he would make Rs 31 profit on every Freedom 251 unit he sold. But closer to an alleged launch date, he now reveals that the company will make a loss between Rs 180 and Rs 270 on every handset.
But now the company’s CEO Mohit Goel has written to PM Narendra Modi seeking Rs 50,000 crore in funding to be able to deliver the Freedom 251 smartphones to users. It is clear that the company doesn’t have a business plan in place for the Freedom 251 smartphone, which was touted as the world’s cheapest smartphone priced at Rs 251 and used it as a marketing tool for Ringing Bells, which was an unknown brand.
With so much uncertainty and so many unfulfilled promises, it is difficult to trust a company like Ringing Bells. In such a scenario, it remains to see how it plans to convince people to spend around Rs 10,000 on a LED TV.
