500 Crore ‘Freedom 251’ project to be funded by promoters of agri-belt: Ringing Bells prez

New Delhi: Noida-based start-up Ringing Bells president Ashok Chadha said the funding of the ‘Freedom251’ project would be met by the promoter family of the company that is ‘engaged in agri-commodities business’ in Uttar Pradesh.

He however, declined to give further information.

“Today the funding is from the promoters from the agri-belt and this is the capital of three generations,” Chadha told the media here after the launch of world’s cheapest smart phone.

“The investment in a plant will be roughly 250 crores. These are modular plants, you can yourself assess. With the volume, we are going to scale up each line. We are starting off with two plants one in Noida and another in Uttaranchal and we expect to cascade this further as I unravel the right permutation from taxes point of view particularly GST,” Chadha added.

Highlighting the potential use of the phone to empower citizens in rural and semi-urban areas, Chaddha said manufacturing cost of the phone is about Rs 2,500, which will be recovered through a series of measures like economies of scale, innovative marketing, reduction in duties and creating an e-commerce marketplace.

The Rs 251 smartphone was officially launched by Bharatiya Janata Party MP Murli Manohar Joshi at Nehru Park here on Wednesday evening.

The phone can be booked online from 6 a.m. today until Saturday at freedom251.com.

The units would be delivered as late as June 30.

The Ringing Bells Freedom 251 runs on Android 5.1, with a 4-inch display, a quad-core 1.3GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, and 8GB of storage (expandable to 32GB).

The smartphone has a 3.2-megapixel primary and a 0.3-megapixel front camera.

The device has 3G connectivity and has a 1.3GHz quad-core processor, 1GB RAM and 8GB internal memory and supports external memory cards of up to 32GB.

The smartphone comes with pre-installed apps like Swachh Bharat, Women Safety, WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter, among others.

However, one of the drawback of the smartphone is that it may face a possible copyright infringement of Apple’s iconic iPhone. (ANI)