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Airtel Takes On Reliance Jio With 4G Smartphone At ‘Effective Price’ Of Rs 1,399 

The 4G smartphone will be available “effectively at the price of a feature phone”.



Customers at a cafe speak into their mobile phones in New Delhi, India. (Photographer: Sanjit Das/Bloomberg News)
Customers at a cafe speak into their mobile phones in New Delhi, India. (Photographer: Sanjit Das/Bloomberg News)
  • Airtel tied-up with Karbonn Mobiles to take on Reliance Jio ahead of the festive season.
  • The bundled 4G smartphone will be available at an “effective price” of Rs 1,399
  • The dual-SIM device has 8GB memory, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS
  • Karbonn A40 Indian has a full touchscreen plus dual SIM slots, and offers complete access to all apps on Google Play Store.

Bharti Airtel Ltd. on Wednesday launched a ‘low cost’ 4G smartphone in partnership with Chinese handset maker Karbonn Mobiles to counter Reliance's ‘free’ JioPhone offer.

The phone will ‘effectively cost’ Rs 1,399, for which customers will have to make 36 continuous monthly recharges of Rs 169 and get two cash refunds – Rs 500 after 18 months and another Rs 1,000 after 36 month, Airtel said in a statement. The dual-SIM device has 8 GB memory, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS.

The Airtel plan comes just when billionaire Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio has started delivering its low-cost 4G-enabled smart feature phone on payment of a one-time refundable deposit of Rs 1,500 to pre-booked customers.

The customer needs to make a down payment of Rs 2,899 for the 4G smartphone and make 36 continuous monthly recharges of Rs 169. The customer will get a cash refund of Rs 500 after 18 months and another Rs 1,000 after 36 months, taking the total cash benefit to Rs 1,500.
Airtel Statement

Those not wanting to opt for the Rs 169 bundled plan will have to do recharges worth Rs 3,000 within the first 18 months to claim the first refund of Rs 500, and recharge by another Rs 3,000 over the next 18 months to claim the second refund of Rs 1,000.

Airtel said the partnership with Karbonn is the first of several it plans to have with mobile handset manufacturers to “bring highly affordable bundled 4G smartphone options to the market.” Under this partnership, the Karbonn A40 Indian is being offered to customers.

The Google Certified – Karbonn A40 Indian has a full touch screen plus dual SIM slots, and offers complete access to all apps on Google Play Store, including YouTube, Facebook and WhatsApp.

Raj Pudipeddi, director of consumer business and CMO, Bharti Airtel said, “Airtel's aspiration is to digitally empower every Indian with high speed data access.” The company plans to partner with multiple manufacturers to bring affordable smartphone options to the market and build an ‘open ecosystem' of low cost devices’.

“Through this association, we aim at strengthening our reach with the consumer that resides at the heart of smart telephony,” Pardeep Jain, managing director at Karbonn Mobiles said.

The real strength of our consumer base being an Indian smartphone brand is towards empowering every Indian with smart telephony and through this association we want to bring to our customers full blown smartphone experience at a price of just Rs 1,399.
Pardeep Jain, MD, Karbonn Mobiles

The latest salvo from Airtel - India's largest operator with subscriber base of over 281 million - promises to raise the competitive heat in the telecom sector, just ahead of the festive season.

The delivery of about six million Reliance JioPhones started in the second half of September, although the company has not provided an update of the deliveries made so far.

Watch the discussion with Shiv Putcha, associate director of research company IDC Asia Pacific on the extent to which Airtel’s move was influenced by the JioPhone.