Freedom 251 smartphone's CEO Mohit Goel says 2 lakh units ready to ship

NOIDA: The man who stunned everyone by announcing a smartphone for Rs 251, the world’s cheapest, claimed on Thursday 2 lakh units of the phone are ready and will be distributed over a month.
The phone is from Taiwan and has been assembled in Haridwar, but 2 lakh is the maximum his company, Ringing Bells, can do right now, its founder and owner Mohit Goel told TOI. “If the project is not supported by the government, it cannot go ahead,” he said.
But the limitation with his current venture is not stopping Goel from thinking ahead.“I am launching the cheapest 32-inch LED TV at Rs10, 000. There is no pre-booking for it,” he said.
Since he announced Freedom 251, as the phone is known, this February, arousing curiosity and suspicion in equal measure, Goel and his company have been under close scrutiny of the government, police and buyers. Ringing Bells will distribute the phones to those who have booked it through a cash-on-delivery mechanism. “This phone is from Taiwan. We imported it via a third party in a knocked down format of 26 pieces. It was assembled and branded in a Haridwar factory. We have 2 lakh phones and we will deliver them over a month a staggered manner. This is the maximum we can do at the moment,” Goel said.

Goel, who is from Shamli and graduated with an engineering degree from Amity University in Noida, said there were investors interested in his project without getting into specifics but kept insisting government support was imperative. “I don’t have the capacity to deliver more 2 lakh phones. So, this is a pilot launch,” he said.
Asked about the specifications of the phone, whose models — one black and another white — he showed this correspondent, Goel said it has a 4-inch screen with an internal memory of 1GB, 8GB expandable to 32GB and a quad core processor.
“The market price of this phone is Rs 1,180. We are selling it at Rs 251. We have preloaded it with apps, which cannot be disabled. There are 12 apps. So all those app companies have subsidised the cost,” he explained.
As for the distribution, Goel claimed Ringing Bells has 280 dealers spread across 12 states, including UP. “We have had 70 lakh offline bookings so far,” he said.