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With more 25,000 sales bookings registered in close to 100 days, Ford Figo is surely on a high in the Indian market. Be it the Tier I, II or the Tier III markets, there is no denying to the fact that the product has been a hit with target customers nationwide.

Michael Boneham, president and managing director, Ford India recently said that the bookings of 25,000 units is surely a very important milestone in the journey of Ford in the Indian market and the product has proved to be a big boost for the Ford brand in the Indian market.

With a view to establish a proper framework before its small car enters the Indian shores, Toyota has recently taken a step in the same direction by joining hands with Indian Bank to provide retail financing facilities to its prospective customers.

TKM said in a statement that the company has extended its auto retail finance to their prospective customers with Indian Bank after it had signed a MoU with the public sector lender.

There is no denying to the fact tat since the day the Indian subsidiary of the American auto major, Ford Motor Company has launched Figo in the Indian market, it has been able to gain a large chunk of the small car market.

In fact, with the start of the second shift at its manufacturing facility in Maraimalai Nagar near Chennai, the company now expects top clear the backlog of the 4,000 units at its Figos in a month’s time.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee made it known today that the immediate task before the government at present is to focus on the growth of the economy and how to bring it back to the 9 per cent growth trajectory. The growth was at 7.4 per cent during the last financial year which the Finance Minister plans to bring up to a double digit figure as soon as possible.

Due to the recent recession, India has had to encounter a lot of financial improprieties in the last 12-18 months, including crisis in the price of commodities and energy.

Indian indices traded in a small range, oscillated above and below the dotted line, finally closed almost flat. SENSEX closed at 17909, down 29 points and Nifty at 5378, down 7 points from the previous close. CNX MIDCAP index was up 0.03% and BSE SMALLCAP index was up 0.12%. The market breadth was negative with advances at 566 against declines of 714 on the NSE. Top gainers are listed as  AXISBANK, RELCAPITAL, HUL, TATAMOTORS, TCS, TATASTEEL, TATAPOWER, SAIL and KOTAKBANK whereas top losers are listed as ONGC, RCOM, HDFCBANK, SBIN, UNITECH, GAIL and BPCL.

While the company may have faced some labour unrest in the recent past but its plans for the future remains intact.

In fact, to meet the growing demand for batteries from the car and motorcycle sectors, Exide industries has recently announced that the company will be spending money matching the scale of Rs 400 crore this fiscal (2010-11) to increase capacity in its various plants.