Tata Motors gathers renewed interest from Africa
Pune: Tata Motors has been approached by few nations of Francophone Africa for bus body building units, Ravi Kant, executive director, said. He was addressing journalists at the company's Pune plant during a visit by Abdoulaye Wade, president of Senegal, here on Sunday. The company had won a $19-million tender for supplying 500 buses to Senegal and recently set up a body building facility there to aid the process.

Last month's inauguration of the bus body plant at Thies in Senegal, built with technical assistance from Tata Motors, was attended by Wade as also the presidents of Ivory Coast, Sudan, Burkina Faso, Cape-Verde and Mauritania. Asked about the evolving relation with Tata Motors, Wade said, it dealt for the moment with buses but there is also interest in his country to assemble small cars for use as taxis. Later, alluding to a project he has thought of over the last several Wade said the Tatas could possibly be sounded out for the plan to have an African peoples' car.
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AB Corp re-launch coincides with movie muhurat
Mumbai: Amitabh Bachchan's AB Corp is back with a bang again. It coincided with a mahurat shot of Ranveer, AB Corp's first film in its new reincarnation. AB Corp, earlier ABCL, was referred to the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction and was declared sick in 1999. The company had ended up with a debt of Rs 90 crore. "Somewhere we went wrong and failed with a lot of mistakes," said Bachchan. "I was left with nothing except my house in Mumbai and an asset in Delhi. Nevertheless, it was my moral right to pay back my dues. I was left with nothing except my ability to act. One day, I just walked across my house to Yash Chopra's house and told him that I am broke and I need a role in his next film. He took a second to decide and that's how I ended up being cast in Mohabattein."

Those attended the function included Dilip Kumar, Saira Banu, Dharmendra, Ranjit, Bindu, Prakash Mehra, Yash Chopra, Govind Nihalani, Govinda, Ritesh Deshmukh, Sanjay Dutt, Danny Denzongpa Satish Shah, Pankaj Udhas, Udit Narayan, Hariharan
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GW Capital to shortlist firms to park funds
Bangalore: GW Capital, a private equity fund, is planning to add two to four companies to its portfolio in the coming few months. It is currently on a familiarisation trip with half a dozen candidate companies before zeroing in on some of them for parking the funds, said Vishal Nevatia, CEO, GW Capital. "We have shortlisted six medium-sized companies and may make it about four. The investments may start happening hopefully in the next six months, as we have already been working them for some time now."

Up to 60 per cent of the Rs 150-crore corpus, the India Value Fund, that it raised in 2000 has been placed so far in four companies. Having invested in Biocon India, CRM player Epicenter Technologies, in healthcare provider Quality Care of Hyderabad and movie distribution and multiplex company Shringar Films, GW Capital is yet to get into its two remaining focus areas, retailing and supply chain management.
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Toyota hopeful to increase Qualis sales in Tamil Nadu
Chennai: Toyota Kirloskar Motor is targeting a 53-per cent growth in its vehicle sales, mainly the Toyota Qualis, in Tamil Nadu during calendar year 2003 over last year. During January-September 2003, the sale of the Toyota Qualis in the state was 2,572 and the yearend figure will be 3,850. Since inception in 1997, the company has sold about 7,000 Qualis in Chennai alone, the company's marketing manager, Sailesh Shetty, said. Tamil Nadu contributes 12 per cent of TKM's vehicle sales volume in the country. There are about 3,000 outstanding requests for Qualis across the country including 300 in Tamil Nadu.

TKM is a joint venture between Toyota Motor Corporation and the Kirloskar group. The company has invested nearly Rs 900 crore in its plant at Bidadi in Mysore with a capacity to produce 50,000 units annually. Shetty said during January-September 2003, TKM sold 22,475 Qualis, a 33 per cent market share in the multi-utility segment in India. The Toyota Corolla, the company's C+ segment vehicle launched in February 2003, clocked sales of 6,055 vehicles during the period under review.
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