[centaur]

A Bangalore based firm is now offering a smartphone for Rs 99. Its reportedly the cheapest smartphone available in the world. The name of the firm is Namotel and the name of the phone is Acche Din. However, buyers are required to register on bemybanker.com website to get a user ID and password, which is then used to book the smartphone on namotel.com and this registration comes at a one time life time fee of Rs 199. So technically the phone works out for Rs 298+shipping.

Hope this doesn't turn out to be like one of the earlier cheap phone schemes Ringing bells which launched the phone (Freedom 251) at Rs 251. Only time will tell.

Here is the link to the original article.

[hybridpetrol]

Why do people believe all this?
As long as people think "The amount is less only, I can take the loss if this turns out to be bogus" and try their luck, such announcements would keep coming. They can crowd-source like this, and get the collected amount, and probably will never come back with anything.

If nothing happens after they book the product for several months, how will they get their money back? Anybody can create a website, but on what basis will you place your trust?
What sort of R&D has happened to make phones this cheap, and who provides funding for that, when there is no cash flow in the company?
Is there any announcement about how long will they cover the product? I assume there will not be any warranty, but if something goes wrong, is there any way other than throwing it away as e-waste?

Before crashing servers by sending amounts, those who send money has to just think. If it is too good to be true, it probably isn't.

[civic-sense]

I think this phone comes with a huge message - that, if it is too good to be true, then it should be a fake. And then he goes on and names it Acche Din. I think that person is a genius.

[amit_2025]

Don't Miss the fact that this company is going beyond the Ache Din & Make in India campaigns in using the PM's name

The name of the company is also with his popular initials i.e. Namotel or Narendra Modi Telecom?

[pganapathy]

Sounds remarkably like a scam, similar to the Ringing Bells Freedom 251 phone. It is impossible to make money selling a phone for 2 to 3 hundred rupees unless you do charge for it via the post-paid subscription method where you need to have a contract for say 24 months. Not a normal concept in India, so not likely to work. Plus, the bulk of people getting such a cheap phone will look at a pre-paid option.

[gsurya]

Before the elections, there was another 'Smart Namo' phone

http://www.smartnamo.com/

Still has links to 'buy' but go nowhere.

[centaur]

Worst even is the fact that there is a Namo to most of these, be it the Namotel or the smartnamo. Not sure why the ministry/concerned department isnt making sure that the PMs name/initials/acronyms arent used for such scams

[GTO]

Originally Posted by hybridpetrol

The amount is less only, I can take the loss if this turns out to be bogus

Scam thousands (or even lakhs) of people for an amount so small that they'll not bother suing you. 99 bucks is something that people will just forget about. Ours is a large country. It's easy to find suckers who'll part with 100 bucks (or even 251, as Ringing Bells showed).

If there are a handful who bother going the legal route, then these scamsters will refund only those people.

India had better adopt the concept of 'class action lawsuits'.

[commonman]

This is 'making hay when the sun shines'. Modi government started a Make in India campaign,giving value to Digital India. The cunning people took this time to make money, while the idea of Digital India is going down the drain, with these type of cheap marketing promotions.The government must tackle this issue at the earliest, else this may boomerang to the current government 3 years down the line.Lots of things are at risk,if these type of promotions go uncontrolled.

[noopster]

What's that they say... "Fool me once, it's on you; fool me twice, I'm an idiot"?

Reminds me so much of Milo Minderbender from Catch-22 who somehow made a profit buying eggs for seven cents and selling them for five cents.

Utter idiocy of people fall for this again after Ringing Bells.

Edit: here's an article. The company's website is not accessible, so this is the next best option

[mayankk]

The "promoter" is a relationship(?) manager who till recently worked with Axis bank.
The registration fee on bemybanker.com is 199, which is twice the "cost" of the "phone".

How much money Mr. Reddy is able to collect will be a barometer of the collective stupidity existing in our country.

[GeneralJazz]

I still dont know if this is serious or a scam or yet another joke (Freedom 651 ). Cant even cast aside the possibility that this could be yet another cheap political publicity stunt. Either case, fun part begins when people start to complain they didnt receive their phones after making payments.

[fordday]

That this is a scam is gone case. How could they so openly advertise such a scam? It almost some one like calling for bids to buy the Taj mahal or the parliament house.

Can the govt bring in some regulation and stop this nonsense?

As always, the govt will will issue a statement like "they are closely monitoring the situation".

[centaur]

Looks like Freedom 251 is back in the news. As per the CEO, 2 lakh units are ready to be shipped and he will not be able to continue with this unless the "Government Supports him". Is he looking for the Government to subsidize the remaining cost of the phone?

Meanwhile he is also talking about a 10k 32 inch LED TV. Check this out -

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

Source

Apparently the delivers start from Jun 28th.