Airtel has announced a new partnership with itel to expand its budget friendly 4G smartphone offerings. The partnership is part of Airtel’s ‘Mera Pehla Smartphone’ initiative wherein it has also partnered with Karbonn, Celkon and Intel to offer affordable 4G smartphones.
As part of the initiative, customers buying itel smartphones on Airtel network will get cashback of Rs 1,500. The cashback offer is only applicable on itel A40 4G and itel A41 smartphones. With the cashback, both companies aim to bring down the effective price of the smartphone, and thus reduce the entry barrier for first-time smartphone buyers.
In order to avail the cashback, customers need to make a down payment of Rs 4,599 for the itel A40, and Rs 4,699 for the itel A41 smartphones. The cashback benefit of Rs 1,500 will be paid back to customers over a period of 36 months. The first cashback of Rs 500 will be credited back at the end of 18 months if the customer has done minimum recharge of Rs 3,000. The remaining Rs 1,000 be credited back over the next 18 months provided they complete another set of recharges cumulating to Rs 3,000.
The itel A40 4G smartphone is priced at Rs 4,599, but the effective price comes down to Rs 3,099 with the Rs 3,500 cashback. The itel A41, on the other hand, is priced at Rs 4,699, but will be available at an effective price of Rs 3,199 including the cashback. Both the devices feature a 5-inch FWVGA display, 1GB RAM, 8GB storage, and are powered by 1.3GHz quad-core processor. They offer a 5-megapixel primary camera and a 2-megapixel secondary camera with flash. The smartphones run Android 7.0 Nougat, and are backed by a 2,400mAh battery. They support connectivity options like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 4G VoLTE as well as ViLTE.
“We are delighted to partner itel as we expand our range of affordable 4G smartphones with an aim to enable every Indian to own a 4G smartphone and be a part of the digital revolution. Airtel now has the largest partner ecosystem of device manufacturers and we thank our partners for sharing our vision of smartphone for every Indian,” said Ajai Puri, COO, Bharti Airtel.
Both the smartphones will come bundled with a monthly recharge pack of Rs 169 with unlimited free local and STD voice calls, and 500MB 4G data per day for 28 days. Airtel has announced similar partnership with Samsung and it is primarily aimed at curtailing the reach of JioPhone, which comes with bundled data offering from Reliance Jio.