New Delhi: Leading home-grown brand Karbonn Mobiles and Bharti Airtel (‘Airtel’), yesterday in a press statement revealed that they had collaborated to bring in new affordable smartphone as part of Airtel’s ‘Mera Pehla 4G Smartphone’ initiative.

The offer from Airtel comes at a time when the Reliance Jio 4G feature phone has barely started shipping.

In the Karbonn-Airtel initiative, the users will have to pay Rs. 2,899 upfront to buy the Karbonn A40 Indian, after which they have to make 36 continuous monthly recharges of Rs. 169 each.

Post this, customers will get a cash refund of Rs. 500 after 18 months and another Rs. 1,000 after 36 months. The total cash benefits add up to Rs. 1,500.

Karbonn A40 Indian is a 4G smartphone that supports dual SIM slot with a 4-inch touch screen and runs on Android 7.0 Nougat. It is powered by a 1.3 Ghz processor with 1GB RAM.

“We are delighted to partner with Karbonn to remove barriers to smartphone adoption and enable millions of Indians to leapfrog to a full touchscreen smartphone experience,” said Raj Pudipeddi, Director – Consumer Business & CMO, Bharti Airtel.