Andrew Bonwick
Vice President of Product Development at Relm Insurance
Madhav Sheth
CEO of Ai+ Smartphone
Stephen Rose
CEO Render Networks

Bharti Airtel today announced a new smartphone in partnership with Celkon. The smartphone, which is dubbed as Celkon Star 4G+ comes at an effective price of just Rs 1,249. Like the earlier Celkon and Karbonn smartphones, the all-new Celkon Star 4G+ also comes under Airtel’s ‘Mera Pehla Smartphone’ initiative. To be noted, this is the second device from Celkon under the partnership with Airtel, and notably, it is also the most affordable smartphone till date in the Mera Pehla Smartphone initiative.

So, the Celkon Star 4G+ smartphone also comes bundled with the Rs 169 tariff plan from Airtel. The Rs 160 tariff plan is exclusively available for smartphones under Mera Pehla Smartphone program, and it offers 500MB data per day, unlimited voice calls for 28 days.
To avail the Star 4G+ at just Rs 1,249, a customer needs to make a down payment of Rs 2749 for the 4G smartphone 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 1000 after 36 months, taking the total cash benefit to Rs 1500.
Airtel also states that if a customer does not wish to opt for the Rs 169 bundled plan, they have the complete flexibility of doing recharges of any denomination and validity as per individual requirements.
However, to claim the cash refund benefit, recharges worth Rs 3000 must be done within the first 18 months (to claim the first cash back of Rs 500) and another Rs 3000 over the next 18 months (to claim the second cashback of Rs 1000).