“Yes! Yes! Yes! Done finally. Now you have to admit that I am lucky”
“Yes, you are. How did you manage? I have been trying since last night but of no use.”
Eighty out of every hundred must have had such a conversation about two months back.
Everyone remembers the phrase Freedom 251 – a marketing strategy used more like a noun that actually created a rage among people such that everyone went crazy over getting a Freedom 251. Marketing strategy or not, it surely gained a lot of attention.
Before discussing about the freedom of cheating that Freedom 251 took, we should know about the ‘claimed’ manufacturer and seller of the world’s cheapest phones. We say claimed since there are allegation against manufacturing rights even. Yes, they are that deep in trouble.
Ringing Bells Private Limited, a Noida based company attracted huge attention when it announced Freedom 251- world’s cheapest 3G smartphone to be sold at the rate of just Rs.251. Founder of Ringing Bells, Mohit Goel literally took the mobile industry by a storm with the launch of Freedom 251. A graduate from Amity University, Mohit Kumar Goel did have a dream of doing big and that kept his perseverance alive and gave him sleepless nights. Running after one dream after taking a small loan to start a phone company that finally grew to be called India’s most affordable smart phone, Mohit did make it to the limelight and every news daily. The launch of Freedom 251 in New Delhi was attended by many dignitaries including politicians.
Indeed Ringing Bells used a good psychological strategy. The public is easily lured by the words sale and discount apart from the illusion of low prices. That’s what made people blind and over two million people tried to place order at the two-day sale despite website crashing.
The launch of Freedom 251 took everyone by shock and created a mad craze among people.
The 3G phone with a 4-inch WVGA resolution display, has a 1.3 Ghz quad-core processor, 1GB RAM, 8GB total storage space and a 3.2 megapixel camera on the back. It has a 0.3 MP front camera and a 1450 mAh battery. All of these in just Rs.251! That too when the Department of Telecom asserted that a smart phone cannot be manufactured in less than Rs. 2300. Ringing Bells claimed to make profit by economies of scale, innovative marketing, reduction in duties and creating an ecommerce marketplace.
Things didn’t stay so fairy tale like after the launch. Firstly, the server crashed. There were problems with payment gateway. They defended it citing the huge number of customer logins which was immediately attended to on a war footing with the help of their associates.
Till here everything seems reasonable and logical as well as possible. Then why was Freedom 251 termed as one of the biggest scams? A mobile handset that people were expecting to be the iPhone for Aam Admi ran into many controversies.
The primary reason being brand issues. Several handsets were reported to have the Adcom logo on the handset. Adcom is a small Indian firm that manufactures mobile handsets and recently issued a statement that it had sold mobile handsets to Ringing Bells but that they did not have the slightest idea that the handset of Rs. 2300 will be sold at a rate of Rs. 251. Adcom is planning to take legal actions against Ringing Bells.
One of the most unethical policies used by Ringing Bells sales team was pre-booking of phones even before the model was launched. According to the figures used by Mohit Goel, almost 25 lakh people had booked Freedom 251 both online and offline.
Many apps even look like a direct copy of Apple’s iPhone. The originality of Freedom 251 is really hard to determine considering all sides. In addition to that, the real handset doesn’t look like anything uploaded in the original site. Before launch many apps for Women safety and Swacch Bharat were promised but as it is said- Promises are made to be broken.
Above all, Freedom 251 doesn’t have a mention in the BIS Certifications page nor at the Qualomm.
After about a month of battling with controversies, Ringing Bells finally decided on refunding money to all the clients. The announcement caused public amazement, server crashes, flooding of newsfeed with Freedom 251 posts, desperation of placing a successful order, unsatisfied customers and a lot of legal trouble with the darkening of the brand image of Ringing Bells which stands to be a perfect example of a start-up being lost even before being nurtured properly.
