Ringing Bells, the company that shot to fame earlier this year after announcing the world's cheapest smartphone -- Freedom 251 priced at Rs 251, has denied rumours that it has shut down.
A report in TeleAnalysis, a leading news portal on the telecommunication and technology industry, had claimed on Thursday that people associated with the company launched a new company -- MDM Electronics Private Limited -- on December 7 at its registered office in Kailash Colony. The report also said that Ringing Bells' website has been shut down.
However, Ringing Bells clarified that they are still in operation and that the new entity is a separate entity distinct from it.
"At Ringing Bells, we have our clear business objectives which we have shared earlier with everyone and we are sticking to it," a spokesperson said in a statement, the New Indian Express reported.
The board of directors of 'MDM Electronics Pvt Ltd' according to TeleAnalysis includes– Mohit Goel, who is also MD of Ringing Bells, and Shashank Goel and Ashok Chaddha, who were also associated with Freedom 251. The report also speculated that the new company may foray into consumer electronics, and may offer feature phones, smartphones and TVs.
Ringing Bells had also pivoted into selling low-cost TVs and smartphones and had even announced selling its products through e-commerce platform Amazon India.
The company had for sometime generated controversy with various people calling the company a Ponzi scheme and several others complaining that they failed to stick to their promised deadlines.
Ringing Bells had first promised to deliver "nearly 200,000" units of Freedom 251.
However, the company failed to provide the smartphones to many people who registered for the handset. Though in July, the company claimed that it had delivered 5,000 units, and promised to deliver 65,000 units to those who had booked the device in Cash on Delivery mode, they subsequently failed to issue any updated figures.
But in a fresh statement issued on Thursday, Ringing Bells said that they have so far delivered around 70,000 devices in West Bengal, Haryana, Himachal, Bihar, Uttarakhand, New Delhi, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.
"We are still getting lot of interest in our product as we have proved that it is possible to arm each and everyone with the reality of digital world. Our target is the low income people," the statement added.
