HOLD THE LINE
IN LATE JULY LAST YEAR, while India was battling the first wave of Covid-19, a small electronics manufacturer quietly set up shop along a leafy road near Ulsoor Lake in Bengaluru.
It was only in October when UTL Neolyncs Private Limited (UNPL) became one of the 16 successful applicants to the government’s production-linked incentive (PLI) manufacturing scheme that the industry took notice. Still, little was known about UNPL, except that it was a joint venture between India’s United Telelinks—best known as the manufacturer of the once-popular Karbonn phones—and an obscure Israeli firm NeoLync that, per its website, is building an “integrated product creation platform” for electronic products.
It was in August this year that UNPL exploded into the spotlight. After all, everyone takes notice when India’s most valuable company brings out its chequebook. Reliance Industries, through its investment arm, pumped ₹20 crore into Neolync Solutions, a UNPL-related entity, with the promise of another ₹40 crore over the next year and a half. And just like that UNPL’s raison d’etre was clear—building the Jio-Phone Next.
The entry-level smartphone is Reliance’s latest salvo in its two-decade-old pursuit of telecom domination. That started with the launch of Reliance Infocomm’s ₹501 CDMA handsets in the early-2000s, a resounding success that introduced millions of users to cellphones and reshaped the Indian telecom sector for good. However, the second effort—Reliance Retail’s Lyf smartphone in late-2016—faded away after an initial bump. The JioPhone Next now takes up the mantle to bring
