Airtel partners Karbonn to offer 4G smartphone for Rs 2,899

To take on Reliance Jio in the handset space, country's top operator Bharti Airtel has partnered with Karbonn to offer a 4G smartphone for an effective price of Rs 1,399.

In an apparent reference to Reliance Jio's Rs 1,500 4G-enabled phone, the Sunil Bharti Mittal-led company said it is offering a smartphone for the price of a feature phone. Airtel said this is the first of several partnerships it plans to have with mobile handset manufacturers to bring affordable bundled 4G smartphone options.

In July, Jio had announced a 4G feature phone that would be sold for a security deposit of Rs 1,500, returnable at the end of three years for a full refund, making the device virtually free for consumers.

However, for the Airtel-Karbonn phone, a customer needs to make a down payment of Rs 2,899 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.

In case the customer does not wish to opt for the Rs 169 bundled plan, the user can do recharges of any denomination and validity but to claim the cash refund, recharges worth Rs 3000 must be done within the first 18 months (to claim the first refund installment of Rs 500) and another Rs 3000 over the next 18 months (to claim the second refund installment of Rs 1000).

The Android-based 4G smartphone, Karbonn A40 Indian, has dual SIM slots and access to popular apps like YouTube, WhatsApp and Facebook. A consumer will not need to return the handset to Airtel or Karbonn at any point to claim the cash benefit.

The partnership is part of Airtel's 'Mera Pehla 4G Smartphone' initiative wherein it will partner with multiple handset players.

"We plan to partner with multiple manufacturers to bring affordable smartphone options to the market and build an open ecosystem of low cost devices," Raj Pudipeddi, Director - Consumer Business & CMO, Bharti Airtel said.

Ever since Jio had announced handsets as part of the offers, incumbent operators too have been forced to forge partnerships with device makers. Airtel was also doing bundling offers with various handset players as also Vodafone and Idea Cellular. However, things further fired up when Jio announced the launch of Rs 1,500 feature phone, targeted at the odd 500 million customers primarily in rural areas. The move by Jio was aimed at giving 4G connectivity at the price of a 2G feature phone.