Jio brings in banks to finance Jio Phone Next | Intends to sell 5 crore units in six months

Reliance Jio has tied up with five banks for financing the sales of its affordable 4G smartphone, the JioPhone Next, developed in collaboration with tech giant Google, the telecom major is aiming to sell up to 5 crore units of the JioPhone Next in the next 6 months, the report added.

JioPhone Next buyers will have to pay 10% cost upfront while lenders could finance the remaining amount, it stated.

State Bank of India, Piramal Capital, IDFC First Assure and DMI Finance have each reportedly assured business worth 10,000 crore INR.

In addition to this, four other Non-Banking Financial Companies have assured 2,500 crore INR worth of credit support.

The JioPhone Next will be available in two variants, a base variant priced at 5,000 INR and an advanced variant priced at 7,000 INR. Jio has set internal targets with distributors and financiers for sales.

For those in the dark, the JioPhone Next, an affordable 4G smartphone by Jio was showcased at the 44th Annual General Meeting(AGM) of Reliance Industries Limited this year.

Reliance Industries Limited has given an initial production order for the JioPhone Next 4G smartphone, developed in partnership with Google to UTL Neolyncs.

UTL Neolyncs is a joint venture between Bangalore-based UTL Group and Neolync Solutions, it has been approved to receive sops under the Government’s Production-Linked Incentive(PLI) scheme for handsets. RIL’s wholly-owned unit, Reliance Strategic Business Ventures Ltd, invested 20 crore INR in Neolync Solutions earlier this month.

The device was previously being tested at the manufacturing facilities of Wingtech Mobiles, Dixon technologies, UTL Neolync, and Flextronics Technologies. Jio, which had about 441 million subscribers towards the end of June, is bidding to touch the 500-million user mark. For that, it is targeting a bulk of the 250 million-plus 2G feature phone users of rivals Bharati Airtel and Vodafone Idea, along with trying to ensure that its own basic JioPhone users also upgrade to its own network and not move to rival networks.

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