{"id":1008,"date":"2016-02-18T21:53:43","date_gmt":"2016-02-18T21:53:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vocso.com\/blog\/?p=1008"},"modified":"2024-09-06T01:49:06","modified_gmt":"2024-09-06T01:49:06","slug":"freedom-251-android-smartphone-15-reason-it-could-be-the-next-big-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vocso.com\/blog\/freedom-251-android-smartphone-15-reason-it-could-be-the-next-big-fraud\/","title":{"rendered":"Freedom 251 Android Smartphone &#8211; 15 Reason It Could Be the Next Big Fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div><p style=\"text-align: left;\">Okay,&nbsp;so today it&#8217;s 17th Feb 2016, when almost everyone is suddenly talking about this less than 500 Rs. android smart phone called Freedom 251, precisely a 251 Rs. smartphone.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I was scanning through the newspaper when I could not ignore the 2 big full page ads of 251 Rs mobile phone. At first it seemed like a govt initiative (not sure if it was intentional), but because it caught my attention, I looked further&#8230; Ringing Bells Pvt Ltd was the company behind it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">When I went out my friends were talking about it. Switched on the TV, it was there too. It&#8217;s all too good to be true.&nbsp;It&#8217;s natural to be too excited about this unbelievable offer, but let&#8217;s try to analyse some facts which I have discovered so far&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_81 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-grey ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<div class=\"ez-toc-title-container\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title ez-toc-toggle\" style=\"cursor:pointer\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<span class=\"ez-toc-title-toggle\"><\/span><\/div>\n<nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.vocso.com\/blog\/freedom-251-android-smartphone-15-reason-it-could-be-the-next-big-fraud\/#specification-of-the-smartphone-as-advertised%e2%80%a6\" >Specification of the smartphone as advertised&#8230;<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.vocso.com\/blog\/freedom-251-android-smartphone-15-reason-it-could-be-the-next-big-fraud\/#lets-examine-some-of-the-facts%e2%80%a6\" >Let&#8217;s examine some of the facts&#8230;.<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/www.vocso.com\/blog\/freedom-251-android-smartphone-15-reason-it-could-be-the-next-big-fraud\/#freedom-215-android-smartphone-photo-difference\" >Freedom 215 android smartphone photo difference:<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4\" href=\"https:\/\/www.vocso.com\/blog\/freedom-251-android-smartphone-15-reason-it-could-be-the-next-big-fraud\/#freedom-251-complaint\" >Freedom 251 complaint:<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.vocso.com\/blog\/freedom-251-android-smartphone-15-reason-it-could-be-the-next-big-fraud\/#some-numbers%e2%80%a6\" >Some numbers&#8230;<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-6\" href=\"https:\/\/www.vocso.com\/blog\/freedom-251-android-smartphone-15-reason-it-could-be-the-next-big-fraud\/#conclusion\" >Conclusion<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"specification-of-the-smartphone-as-advertised%e2%80%a6\"><\/span>Specification of the smartphone as advertised&#8230;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"lets-examine-some-of-the-facts%e2%80%a6\"><\/span>Let&#8217;s examine some of the facts&#8230;.<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><strong>1.<\/strong> Cost of goods required to produce such a smartphone is at least 2500 rupees&nbsp;, leave alone the cost of marketing and profit margin.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2.<\/strong> Photograph of the phone&nbsp;shown on the websites and the video review on various websites are different&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=aGe9Hr_9YEU\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Check this video<\/a> &#8230;<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"freedom-215-android-smartphone-photo-difference\"><\/span>Freedom 215 android smartphone photo difference:<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<p><strong>3.<\/strong> This is not even clear whether the phone has been made or not. It was also observed that the phone displayed carried Adcom branding, which was omitted. Adcom has a similar phone at a price tag of 5000 rupees.<\/p>\n<p><strong>4.<\/strong> The company behind freedom251, Ringing Bells Pvt Ltd was started almost 5 months back on 16th Sep 2015, as per the Ministry of Corporate Affairs Database with CIN (U32204DL2015PTC285276). This means company has no track record.<\/p>\n<p><strong>5.<\/strong> The company has merely 6 employees, wheres they claim to have more than 300 direct and 2000 indirect employees. Company profile on a job portal careesma.in indicates employee count of 20&#8230; that is still far from 300.<\/p>\n<p><strong>6.<\/strong> Company&#8217;s website does not have any information about the manufacturing facility.<\/p>\n<p><strong>7.<\/strong> There is an&nbsp;interesting&nbsp;complaint filed against the company that refers ringing bells as the &#8220;Lalla ki dukan can be found here&#8230; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.complaintslist.com\/electronics\/ringing-bells\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"&quot;nofollow noopener\">click here to read full.<\/a><\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"freedom-251-complaint\"><\/span>Freedom 251 complaint:<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><strong>8.<\/strong> Company boasts of 650 service centres pan India, yet no information about that on their website.<\/p>\n<p><strong>9.<\/strong> There is no venture funding behind the company which raises questions on the company&#8217;s claim of producing at a very large scale (more than 100 thousand devices every&nbsp;month ).<\/p>\n<p><strong>10.<\/strong> At the launch event on Wednesday, Ringing Bells President Ashok Chadha claimed it was being funded by the Agricultural family of UP( referring to Mohit Goel&#8217;s family), whereas Mohit&#8217;s father denied that to be the case.<\/p>\n<p><strong>11.<\/strong> Company says they plan on allowing other sellers to sell via their eCommerce platform, which does not exist right now.<\/p>\n<p><strong>12.<\/strong> Govt has not offered any subsidy on their phone.<\/p>\n<p><strong>13.<\/strong> Make in India tag&nbsp;also seems to be&nbsp;fake because Mr. Chadha himself claimed the parts will be imported from China.<\/p>\n<p><strong>14.<\/strong> Phone&#8217;s will start shipping from June 2016<\/p>\n<p><strong>15.<\/strong> No mention of any&nbsp;return policy although they mention 1 years warranty<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"some-numbers%e2%80%a6\"><\/span>Some numbers&#8230;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Coming back to the very important question once again, how come they can offer at such a low cost and still make money?<\/p>\n<p><strong>According to statistics given by some industry experts&#8230;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>a. Effective selling price of freedom 251 is rupees 291 per phone&nbsp;including shipping of rupees 40.<\/p>\n<p>b. If their claim of 600,000 order per second is to be believed, it sums up to rupees&nbsp;17.46 cr.<\/p>\n<p>c. It was taking order till 12.15pm approx I.e 6 hrs and 15 min which is 22,500 seconds. That means, rupees 17.46 cr per sec x 22,500 sec&nbsp;= rupees 3,92,850 cr.<\/p>\n<p>d. Rupees 3,88,494 cr was turnover of reliance industries in year 2014-15<br \/>\nDoes that&nbsp;mean within 6 hours&nbsp;and 15&nbsp;minutes&nbsp;they crossed turnover of reliance?<\/p>\n<p>e. And if we calculate interest on the said amount per day,&nbsp;3,92,850 cr x 4% x 1\/365 (by taking minimum interest rate)&nbsp;= 43.05 cr.<\/p>\n<p>f. And if after 4 months they will say we are unable to give product and refund rupees 291&nbsp;to everyone&nbsp;43.05 cr x 120 days approx&nbsp;= 5,166 cr. They will earn within 4 months by way of interest<\/p>\n<p>Now even if you consider their promotion and marketing costs, deduct rupees 50 lacs, 1 cr, 5 cr or even 50 crores, that will not make much difference to the figure.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"conclusion\"><\/span>Conclusion<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>If you&#8217;re considering ordering&nbsp;this super cheap android smartphone, order it at the risk of loosing 291 rupees, as it may not make much difference to your pocket, probably&nbsp;you will just need to skip a movie on the weekend to compensate the loss \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Okay,&nbsp;so today it&#8217;s 17th Feb 2016, when almost everyone is suddenly talking about this less than 500 Rs. android smart phone called Freedom 251, precisely a 251 Rs. smartphone. &nbsp; I was scanning through the newspaper when I could not ignore the 2 big full page ads of 251 Rs mobile phone. At first it <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":3442,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,67],"tags":[320,322,325,318,321,326,323,324,327,319],"class_list":["post-1008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marketing","category-technology","tag-budget-smartphone","tag-consumer-skepticism","tag-economic-feasibility","tag-freedom-251","tag-indian-tech-news","tag-make-in-india","tag-manufacturing-controversy","tag-marketing-claims","tag-mobile-technology","tag-ringing-bells-pvt-ltd"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vocso.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vocso.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vocso.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vocso.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vocso.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vocso.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vocso.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vocso.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vocso.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vocso.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}