'Chaiwalas, Panwadis, Doodhwalas, Subziwalas And Dabbawalas Are Selling Detel'

Yogesh Bhatia, MD, Detel, speaks about the business philosophy behind launching economical phones and TVs for the common people

- Jyoti Bhagat

Can you tell about the origin of Digital India and your track record prior to the launch of Detel feature phones?

As the Founder of Digital India, I have been connected with mobility from the very beginning. When the first mobile SIM card was sold in my area, we sold the Scruttle Vital SIM card. The price was Rs 5500. After that we sold the first Nokia, first Reliance and first Tata in our area. Looking at our telecom business strength, it came out to our mind to launch a product that is suitable for unconnected population of 40 million people in our country. This is in sync with the Government of India’s connecting India campaign.

So Detel was the end result of this dream. Can you elaborate on the phones that have been launched?

We have given a gift to the unconnected population of India on August 15 with DETEL D1, the cheapest feature phone. If you search on Google for the world’s most economic feature phone, DETEL D1 comes as the result. We have sold 100,000 units of that product from different sources to unconnected people with the aim to bring common consumers to use mobile phones and stay in contact.