More troubles have cropped up for the Noida-based startup Ringing Bells, after feature phone brand Advantage Computers (Adcom) on Friday threatened legal action against Ringing Bells for passing on Adcom handsets as theirs during the “Freedom 251”-world cheapest phone, launch.
“We are deeply grieved by this incident where our mobile phone has been presented to masses for Rs.251, and therefore, would not hesitate from taking any legal actions against the company, in case the entire fiasco impacts Adcom’s brand name or subsequently we face any other kind of losses,” said Sanjeev Bhatia, Chairman of Adcom.
During the launch event held in February, Ringing Bells had distributed some phones to the media folks, which were Adcom handsets. However, Ringing Bells president Ashok Chadha clarified later that the Adcom handsets were given out as only “samples” to a section of the media and the real “Freedom 251” will be a new product with all promised features.
“On Adcom’s role, we would like to clarify that they provided some prototypes for the sample ‘Freedom 251’ handed over to some special guests, including media, for initial impression about the way the phone would look and behave in future. We have other partners for assembly of our phones. We are happy to share their names on special requests.” said Chadha.
Sanjeev Bhatia even raised suspicion over the pricing policy of ‘Freedom 251’.
“Furthermore, we still haven’t been able to evaluate their pricing policy as we sold the handsets at Rs.3,600 per unit (to Ringing Bells),” added Bhatia.
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