Mohit Goel, the Managing Director of Ringing Bells, a company which announced the Freedom 251 smartphone at a surprisingly low price of Rs. 251, has been detained on allegations of fraud. The person who has slapped the charges against Goel is the owner of Ghaziabad based Ayam Enterprises, who was persuaded to take up a distributorship for the Freedom 251 phone. However, after paying Rs.30 lakh to Ringing Bells, Goel’s firm delivered goods worth Rs.13 lakh only.
This isn’t the first time that the people behind the Rs.251 smartphone have been questioned by the Law. In December 2016, a court had summoned Managing Director Mohit Goel, Directors Anmol and Sumit Goel, CEO Dhaarna Goel and President Ashok Chaddha in a Rs. 2 Crore cheque bounce case. Apparently, Mohit Goel, the firm’s MD has taken money from a lot of people under the guise of making them distributors for his smartphone company.
When Ringing Bells surprised the nation with its Rs.251 smartphone, the company had started accepting online booking without any manufacturing facility. The company had procured some cheap Taiwan-made phones and distributed them with Freedom 251 branding. It was then that the Enforcement Directorate intervened and made the company return all money collected via online bookings. Meanwhile, complaints from dealers started emerging as they had deposited advances with the company. Ringing Bells claims to have received close to seven crore registrations for Freedom 251, however, only 70,000 units have been delivered so far.
Mohit Goel had also sought help from Prime Minister Narendra Modi to deliver all 7.5 crore units of Freedom 251. He wrote a letter to the PM, demanding Rs 50,000 crore from the government under the Digital India initiative. According to an IANS report, Goel in the letter dated June 28 said, “We have brought ‘Freedom 251’ which we offer on ‘Cash on Delivery’ terms. But we have a gap between the BOM (Bill of Materials) and the Selling Price. We, therefore, humbly request the government to support the objective to cascade the availability and usage of smartphones, all through the far reaches of our great nation.”
In a report, Mohit was quoted saying that his family has been into the agri-commodity business, with interests in UP and Haryana, and is the proprietor of Ringing Bells. The family is investing Rs 200 crore into the venture in the form of equity capital and the funds will be used to set up two plants- one in Noida and another in Uttarakhand-to manufacture handsets. In addition to the family investment, the company will raise Rs 300 crore in bank loans for the plants. However, another report in The Times of India said that Mohit’s father Rajesh Goel still has a grocery shop in Garhipukhta, a small town in Shamli district of Uttar Pradesh. Mohit is believed to have worked with his father, assisting him at the shop, but not many knew about it.
