Jet Airways gets nod to fly to New York
New Delhi: After allowing private Indian carriers to operate to the UK and southeast Asia, the government has permitted Jet Airways to launch operations to New York from April.

Jet Airways, which received an overwhelming response to its initial public offer, has been allowed to operate three flights a week from Mumbai to New York via Brussels, official sources said.

The other private carrier, Air Sahara, did not apply for any destination in the US.
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Tatra Trucks to launch new HCV
Bangalore: Tatra Trucks, the heavy commercial vehicles manufacturer, plans to launch a highway transportation vehicle by the year-end to add to its existing portfolio of HCVs. This will be a 20-tonne, 250-horsepower engine vehicle, company officials have indicated.

Officials said that with buoyancy in the economy giving thrust to infrastructure projects, Tatra Trucks hopes to diversify from off-roader projects and equipment carrier vehicles to the conventional sector. The company was also hoping to export its off-roader vehicles to Korea.

TTIL, a member of the UK-based Vectra Group, does not see competition from both Volvo and Tata Daewoo to pose problems, as it would come out with a different category of product from the companies.

TTIL already exports its heavy-duty commercial vehicles to Malyasia and would explore new markets in other South-East Asian countries such as Thailand.

On the competition from within the country for the class of truck, Mr Jinsi said TTIL with larger indigenisation and slight price advantage due to lower base cost could garner a market share of 40 per cent. Volvo is the market leader with 60 per cent in India, it said.

TTIL, which is a 90-10 joint venture, with the Vectra Group being the major partner of Tatra a.s. of Czech Republic, does not intend to increase its investment from its current Rs40 crore as the plant has adequate facility to scale up larger capacity than 200 HCV produced this year.

TTIL, which began its operations in 1997 with a modest investment, hopes to earn Rs100 crore this year, which includes exports worth Rs35 crore. Last year, the turnover was Rs70 crore.

TTIL has invested 2 million euros (Rs10 crore) to set up the 2,00,000 seating system facility in its Bangalore trucks plant complex.

The facility would produce three categories of seating system - super luxury, semi-luxury and city bus - but the company would be targeting 50,000 seats in the first year, primarily focussing on super luxury segment.

TTIL would be exporting 50 per cent of its production, most of it dedicated to FAINSA.
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Sterlite's Tuticorin smelter to get supplies from Chile
Mumbai: Sterlite Industries (India) Ltd, the copper business arm of Vedanta Resources Plc, has announced that it has signed a long-term contract with the world's largest copper mine, Escondida in Chile, for the supply of copper concentrate to Sterlite copper smelter at Tuticorin.

This is the largest concentrate contract signed by an Indian Smelter with a mine.

Under the agreement, Escondida would supply 2,00,000 tonnes of copper concentrate per year to Sterlite's Tuticorin smelter from 2006 onwards.

Sterlite, simultaneously, has also enhanced tonnage under its contracts with other large mines in Chile and Indonesia. At current capacity, Sterlite consumes 6,00,000 tonnes of copper concentrates annually. Raw materials are sourced from both overseas mines and its own captive mines in Australia.

After the Smelter expansion is brought on full stream, the concentrate requirement would be of the order of 1 million tonnes per annum.

With the Chile contract and other enhanced long-term mine contracts, Sterlite will secure majority of its copper concentrate requirement through direct long-term contracts.
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Toyota to launch Qualis variant
Visakhapatnam: A new model of Qualis from Toyota Kirloskar Motors (TKM) will soon be on the roads, which will be a much more advanced and customer-value driven vehicle.

TKM says that it intends to sell 57,000 units of all its vehicles in 2005-06. In the previous year, Toyota had sold 47,000 units out of which 37,000 were Qualis.

The Toyota vehicles are leading in the market in their respective segments, the company added. Its mid-sized car, Corolla, costing between Rs9.6 lakh and 12.5 lakh, accounts for 31 per cent of the market share, while the Camry, the luxury sedan costing upwards of Rs19 lakh, accounts for 23 per cent.
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VLCC to open centre in Dubai
Mangalore: Vandana Luthra's VLCC Health Care Ltd will open its first centre in Dubai in the first quarter of the next fiscal.

The VLCC (Vandana Luthra Curls and Curves) group of companies says six more centres would be opened in West Asia by the end of 2005. The company also plans to open a centre in London on a 14,000-sq. ft. area, which is likely to be operational by April or May.

In the domestic market, VLCC would set up twenty centres by the end of the current financial year.
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Zenith to consider restructuring and fund raising plans
Mumbai: Zenith Ltd has informed the Bombay Stock Exchange that its board is meeting on February 25 to consider and approve the proposal of business restructuring to hive off or sell the company's textile division.

The board will also consider merger of Tungabhadra Holdings Pvt Ltd with the company.

The board will also decide about the mannerin which it will raise funds - either by a further issue of capital on rights basis or preferential issue of shares or debentures to promoters or by rights-cum-public issue of shares at a premium in the form of equity shares or preference shares or cumulative or non-cumulative convertible preference shares or debentures or convertible and non-convertible debentures.

During October 2003 to September 2004, the company achieved a sales turnover of Rs376 crore with net loss at Rs1.62 crore.
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Sasken Communication to tap domestic market
Bangalore: Sasken Communication Technologies has set up a wholly-owned subsidiary, Sasken Network Engineering Ltd (SNEL), to tap the domestic telecom infrastructure market.

SNEL will provide network planning, deployment, commissioning, integration and network operations support to network equipment vendors and telecom operators.

"The launch of SNEL positions Sasken as one of the few telecom technology companies worldwide that provide end-to-end services across the wireless life-cycle from chip design, R&D, product development, software design & development, testing and network deployment, integration and post deployment maintenance and support," the company has said in a statement.
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Kwick launches suite of simulation and VR services
Chennai: Kwick Soft Solutions, a Chennai-based software firm, has launched Kwick ViSiM, a suite of simulation and virtual reality services developed on 3-D graphics rendering engine.

The engine facilitates prototyping and development of visualisation, simulation, business applications, and games that require 3D graphics with high degree of interactivity. The company would initially focus on the international market, it has said. In two years the company hopes to achieve revenues of about $17 million (Rs75 crore).

The company is currently in talks with a German firm for using Kwick ViSiM.
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