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Showing posts with the label Ringing Bell

The truth about Ringing Bells, the makers of the world’s cheapest smartphone at Rs 251

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On July 8,  Mohit Goel  , CEO and founder of  Ringing Bells  , the makers of what is being touted as the  world's cheapest smartphone  personally hand-delivered the first model of  Freedom 251  to a surprised  Ankita Birla , a 27-year-old vendor co-ordinator from  Noida  .  Birla had to pay Rs 291 for the smartphone, of which Rs 40 includes a delivery charge levied by the company. Like the countless others who had placed an order for the smartphone, she too was skeptical about the phone ultimately reaching her.  "I never thought the company would deliver," she admitted, echoing the thoughts of the entire  Indian smartphone market  . Her suspicions were only reinforced by all the controversies the company was mired in- from being accused of being a fraud and defaulting on vendor payments to relabeling an existing brand and demanding Rs 50,000 crore from the Indian government  to continue its production.  Twenty-nine-year-old Goel, on the other hand is unperturbed and

Freedom 251: Ringing Bells Says Will Begin Phone Deliveries From June 28

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Ringing Bells, a little-known company that ran into controversy after announcing the Freedom 251 - a Rs. 251 smartphone, now claims it will start deliveries of the handset to customers from June 28. Deliveries will start to customers who have registered for buying the phone, Noida-based company's Managing Director Mohit Goel said. "We will start shipment of Freedom 251 from June 28 to customers who paid for it earlier on COD (cash-on-delivery) basis," he told Press Trust of India. Ringing Bells began selling the handset, Freedom 251, via its website in February. But the launch of the smartphone, touted to be the world's cheapest, swirled into controversy, with some calling it a fraudulent scheme. The website of the company also crashed during two-day sale due to the huge response from prospective buyers. The company claimed that around 30,000 customers had booked the phone in the first batch despite the glitch. The company, however, withdrew the produc