India’s mobile phone industry got a shock of its kind on Monday morning when Ringing Bell, a hitherto unknown company, announced to sell 4G smartphones at the cheapest price – a mere Rs 2999. The company flooded some of the large mainline newspapers with full spread advertisements proclaiming itself of having ‘the most affordable products’ in the mobile world.
If this company could able to offer 4G smartphones at this price, undoubtedly, Bell brand smartphones would be the most affordable smartphone in the country.
But the industry is in shock. They are shocked thinking about two things -one, whether this is possible to sell 4G smartphones at this price, or two, is this company a fraud?
“It’s not possible looking at the BOM price prevalent in the market to sell a 4G phone for this price,” said an industry expert who did not want to be named. “There is something fishy here,” he added.
A little probe into this company offers something to think about.
The company Bell is registered as ‘Ringing Bells Pvt Ltd’ on September 16, 2015 which means the company is just 4 months old now. According to records available at ministry of Corporate Affairs, Ringing Bells or Bell has three directors – Mohit Kumar Goel, Sushma Devi and Rajesh Kumar.
However, these directors, according to the industry, are unknown to the mobile phone business.
Ringing Bells has a paid up capital of Rs 6,000,000 and authorized capital of Rs 10,000,000.
Ringing Bells is planning to launch its products on February 12 at Delhi Gymkhana and the products would be available for distributorship from the next day. The distributors meet is planned at Unitech Gold Park in Noida.
The company has advertised about three mobile phones, one smart and two feature phones. The smartphone Bell Smart 101 is priced at Rs 2,999 and the feature phones, Bell Master and Bell 4U, are priced at Rs 999 and Rs 799 respectively. Besides the company also has another product, a power bank, priced at Rs 399.
Ringing Bells has offered its products to be booked first by making the entire price of the product which will then be delivered to the customer free of cost.
A company executive said the phones will be delivered withing February 25th.
