Ashok Leyland to launch luxury bus
New Delhi: Ashok Leyland will launch a 'super luxury' bus in January 2002 as part of a joint venture with Sundaram Industries and Spanish bus body maker, Irizar.

The super luxury coach would be priced at onwards of Rs 25 lakhs depending upon the options required by the customer. Most probably, they will be sold under the original Irizar brandname of 'Inter-Century'.

The bus would have a 'space frame' design, built on a double chassis, one on the front and the other on the rear, on which the axles would be mounted.

The bus would have power steering, audio/video facility, air-conditioning and a telephone.The bus would be targeted at various segments like city-to-city, tourist, pilgrimage and airport-to-city travel.

Ashok Leyland, Sundaram, a TVS Group company, and Irizar hold equal stake in Irizar TVS which was formed earlier this year.

The buses would be manufactured at the Trichi and Madurai bus body making factories of TVS Coach, the erstwhile joint venture of Sundaram Industries and Leyland.
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ICICI Prudential to hike capital by Rs 100 cr
New Delhi: ICICI and UK-based Prudential would infuse another Rs 100 crore in their life insurance venture.
The decision comes in the wake of rapid growth in business of the ICICI subsidiary and the need to adhere to Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority's (IRDA) prudential norm.

As per IRDA norms, all insurers have to recapitalise their ventures in proportion to the business growth in order to maintain a solvency ratio of 150 per cent.

The 74:26 venture between the leading Indian FI and UK's leading insurer started operations this year and has so far opened shop in nine cities including the four metros, Bangalore, Pune and Chandigarh.

So far, ICICI has come up with about nine products including "Save 'n' Protect", "CashBak", "ForeverLife", "LifeGuard", "Extra Protection Riders", "AssureInvest" and "LifeLink". It also has two pension plans "Forever Life" and "ReAssure".
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Indya.com to outsource services
New Delhi: Indya.com plans to outsource several services and follow an aggregation model. Plans are afoot to enter into partnerships with third-party online vertical portals, according to Indya.com CEO Sunil Rajshekhar.

According to Rajshkehar, Indya as a brand would continue, but would complement STAR TV which has entertainment and information as its core domain.

The portal will continue its e-mail service but channels such as finance and shopping may be outsourced.
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Nabard sanctions loans to 6 states
Mumbai: National Bank for Agriculture & Rural Development on Saturday sanctioned loans aggregating Rs 188.90 crore to six states.

Accordingly, Madhya pradesh would get Rs 65.18 crore followed by Karnataka and Gujarat at Rs 53.56 crore and Rs 40.90 crore respectively for creation of rural infrastructure, Nabard said in a release. The other three states are Haryana (Rs 19.05 crore), Kerala (Rs 9.46 crore) and Nagaland (Rs 95 lakh), it said.
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BPL slashes airtime rates
Mumbai: BPL has slashed airtime rates for pre-paid cards to Rs 1.99 per minute from Rs 2.25 per minute. The new tariff will be effective from November 5, 2001.

BPL Mobile is also offering value added services like call holding, call waiting, call forwarding and call conferencing on its pre-paid card, MOTS.

BPL Mobile will continue to offer a host of unique services on MOTS like number portability (which lets a subscriber keep the same number when shifting to a BPL Mobile postpaid subscription), Internet e-mail, miHearmail, SMS based services like MiNews, miChat, miDate and miMessaging.
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Continental, Metro group join hands
New Delhi: Continental of Germany, the third largest tyre manufacturer in the world, has tied up with the Metro group to set up the worlds first hi-tech rubber sports wheel project in India.

As per the arrangement, Continental will buy back the entire production of RSW from Metro for the US and European markets.

The Delhi-based Rs 300-crore Metro group will invest more than Rs 10 crore in the first phase of the project which will have the capacity to produce two million wheels per annum. The export turnover in the first year will be Rs 15 crore, which is expected to go up to Rs. 75 crore with in next four years.

Last year, Metro had entered into an agreement with Continental to supply bicycle tyres and tubes under the Continental brand name for its European and American markets. To produce tyres for Continental, Metro had set up a plant in Ludhiana with an investment of over Rs 40 crore.

Metro Tyres has a capacity to produce around 1.5 lakh tyres and the same number of tubes per day.
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Greaves comes under Brij Mohan Thapar
New Delhi: The ownership and management of the Rs 700-crore Greaves Ltd will now be vested with the Brij Mohan Thapar group as part of family settlement agreement.

The Brij Mohan Thapar group, which includes Gautam Thapar, vice-chairman and managing director, Ballarpur Industries Ltd (BILT), will now control and manage Crompton Greaves Ltd, Bilt Chemical, English Indian Clays and Bharat Starch Industries besides Greaves Ltd.

The four Thapar brothers -- Mr Inder Mohan Thapar, Mr Brij Mohan Thapar, Mr Lalit Mohan Thapar and Mr Madan Mohan Thapar (all are sons of Late Lala Karam Chand Thapar) -- had last year decided to reorganise the businesses under the group between themselves, both in terms of ownership and management.
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HM scheme to swap old taxi cars
Kolkata: Hindustan Motors Ltd (HML) has launched a scheme to swap old taxi cars for new ones in the city, where it enjoys a monopoly market. This would be a test-launch for a national scheme aiming to swap old Ambassador taxi cars. In the last 50 years HML have sold around 3,50,000 taxi cars in the country.

Kolkata has over 35,000 taxis of which around 17,000 are more than 15-years old.

In the first phase, HML plans to swap 150 taxis. It has tied-up with UCO Bank for providing finance to the taxi owners.

The new cars that will be provided under the scheme will be compliant with Bharat Stage II/Euro II environment norms. The salvage value will be adjusted against the down-payment. UCO Bank will charge interest at a flat rate of 8.5 per cent.
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