Indian audio brand Mivi has confirmed it is entering the smartphone business, and the most telling detail is not the phone itself but who it has hired to sell it. Mivi has appointed Himanshu Tandon — the former head of Poco India and former Vice President of CMF by Nothing — as its chief business officer, according to ETV Bharat. That is a serious budget-segment operator joining a company that has so far only made earbuds and speakers.
What Mivi has actually confirmed about its first smartphone
In an official post on X, Mivi said it will launch a 5G smartphone in India in September, powered by a Snapdragon chipset. The teaser shows the handset in a green colourway with a flat rear panel and a flat frame with rounded edges, under the tagline “Pretty Powerful.”
A live marketing poster on Flipkart is doing the teasing, which also settles where the phone will be sold. Beyond that, very little is official. ETV Bharat is explicit that “details such as the name, specifications, exact launch date, and pricing are yet to be revealed officially.”
Two caveats worth flagging, because they are circulating as though they were confirmed. GSMArena relays an unattributed report that the phone will be priced below ₹15,000, and that it would be the only phone at that price in India with a Snapdragon chip. The price is a report of a report with no named source behind it, and the “only phone in the segment” line is a sweeping claim nobody has demonstrated. Neither belongs in a buying decision yet. A specific September 26 launch date is also being repeated in some coverage; it does not appear in either of the sources here, both of which say the date is unannounced.
Why the Tandon hire matters more than the teaser
Anyone can post a teaser render. Building a sub-₹15,000 phone that survives contact with the Indian market is a different problem — it needs chipset supply deals, service-centre coverage, and a retail relationship that does not collapse after the first sale. Tandon ran Poco in India during the years it defined that price bracket, and then worked on CMF, Nothing’s budget sub-brand. Hiring him is the most concrete evidence so far that Mivi intends a real product line rather than a one-off white-label experiment.
Mivi is also not moving alone. Fellow Indian brand Fire-Boltt, previously known for affordable smartwatches, launched its own first phones — the Boltt Ace 5G and Boltt Evo 4G — on Flipkart on August 25, 2026.
What this could mean for budget buyers in India
The timing is not accidental. Phone prices have been drifting upward on the back of memory-chip costs, and the pressure lands hardest at the bottom of the market, where a few hundred rupees of bill-of-materials decides whether a spec survives to shipping. More brands competing under ₹15,000 is straightforwardly good for buyers, if the phones are any good.
That “if” is the part to hold onto. A first-generation phone from an audio company carries real risk that a spec sheet will not show: how long software updates last, how many security patches arrive, and whether there is a service network when something breaks in month fourteen. Those are the questions to ask Mivi when it announces the phone, and they matter more at this price than the chipset name on the teaser. We will update once Mivi confirms the model, the date and the price.
Sources: ETV Bharat, GSMArena
