NEW DELHI : At the Maruti Udyog Ltd. factory near New Delhi, trucks carrying components roll in without pause, while a row of trailers waits for new cars such as the Alto and Wagon R to be loaded on to containers.

The carmaker, majority-owned by Japans Suzuki Motor Corp., claims about half of Indias passenger vehicle market, but that share is in danger of shrinking as wealthier consumers shift to bigger cars and more carmakers prepare to launch small cars.

To keep the current market share is very difficult, but we want to try, said Joint Managing Director Hirofumi Nagao. One of our weakest areas is (lack of) cars in the upper segment, he said, referring to cars more than 4.7 metres long.

Small cars make up more than two-thirds of Indias passenger vehicle market, which had sales of 1.1 million units last year. The market is forecast to nearly double to 2 million units by 2010, and Nagao is sure its profile will broadly stay the same.

The market looks like a pyramid now, Nagao said, making a peak of his fingers at the plant in Gurgaon, near New Delhi.

DLF Ltd garnered Rs 560 crore on the first day of the pre-launch of Belaire, the companys latest apartment project in Gurgaon. The Rs 900-crore project, consisting of 360 flats, has already witnessed 50 per cent booking of the total inventory, a source said.

The source added that DLF had made these bookings in the first two hours of the launch.

Buyers made a downpayment of 10 per cent of the total cost of the apartments. Apartments of 2,800 square feet and 2,950 square feet were booked for approximately Rs 7,000 per square feet, a Delhi-based broker said.

He added that premium flats of 4,000 square feet and corner flats of 3,325 square feet were both sold for approximately the same price of Rs 7,250 per square feet.

Ahmedabad-based GVFL Ltd (formerly known as Gujarat Venture Finance Ltd) has divested its holding in Parsec Technologies Ltd, a Gurgaon-based pioneer in call centre solutions.

Parsec helps third party service providers and enterprises to set up and operate call centres efficiently and profitably. At present, over 20 offshore contact centres rely on its offerings to run their operations. It has a nationwide presence along with offices in the USA, the UK and the Philippines.

In 1998, GVFL had invested Rs 5 crore in two phases in Parsec Technologies.

For GVFL, this is the 44th successful divestiture from 57 investments. Over the past 15 years, it has raised five venture capital funds with a combined capital of Rs 132 crore.

DELHI kicks-off its preparation for the 61st national football championship for the Santosh Trophy, fingers crossed, hoping that its star players will be back in time to pull up sagging morale. The meet is scheduled to start in Haryanas satellite cities Gurgaon and Faridabad from September 14.

A chunk of Delhis hope will be with start striker Sunil Chhetri who turns out for JCT Mills, Phagwara. The Capitals squad that made it to the last-eight in the previous edition in Kerala.

We are hopeful that JCT will release Chhetri in time. There are several other players who we want in our squad -Vinay Singh, Praveen Rawat from Churchill Brothers, Avdesh Pal from Dempo, Prashant Jaggi from HAL, Rajat Guha from Mohun Bagan, Sumit Thapa from Air India and the Rahmatullah brothers (Umar and Adnan) from Mahindra United, said Anandi Barua, the newly appointed coach of Delhi football team.

New Delhi : In a move to curb illegal abortions, the Directorate of Health Services (DHS) is planning to get a software developed for monitoring ultrasound scanning in clinics across the city.

Clinics are supposed to submit a form F, which states the purpose for the ultrasound, to the DHS.

We will get to know whether the number of forms submitted by the clinic tally with the number that we get with the help of the software. This way, we will be able to keep a tab on any illegal activity. The records will be available with photos and addresses of women who under go scanning, which will help us to react without delay in case of any illegality, said a senior official.

There are around 200 ultrasound clinics in Delhi.

The Capitals sex ratio of 821 per thousand males — less than that of various districts of Haryana, including Faridabad, Hissar and Gurgaon — has been of great concern to officials.

Would you, as a personnel manager, hire someone past his 40s on the strength of a six-month certificate course in business administration? Offhand, our guess is the answer would be, perhaps not, unless there are other strong pluses. Which brings us to the management programmes of this kind devised by the defence ministrys directorate-general, resettlement (DGR) for officers facing retirement. IIM Lucknow staged the first such certificate course towards the end of 2004; IIM Ahmedabad and MDI Gurgaon have joined the list; the DGR is getting others in, too. The sponsored candidate pays 60% and the DGR the rest. The query is this: how useful are these and like courses in getting its students a job in civilian life?

This isnt to decry the effort. Obviously, the candidates who apply feel it may be worth it, more so as the institutes in question - IIM, MDI, Narsee Moonjee - look nice on a resume. As with everything else in India, the scale of numbers involved is somewhat daunting: the Army alone sees around 1,200 officers and 50,000-odd other ranks leave each year; the Navy and Air Force numbers are much less, but small only in comparison. It is, perhaps, one reason why the DGR and others addressing the issue like the Army Placement Agency are long on the schemes they have listed and coy about how many actually get placed through these efforts. The rules illustrate this: DGR asks officers, for instance, to register in the last year of service and to bear in mind that everyone has to have a chance to get placed. In contrast, the British Armys website on resettlement is emphatic that in effect, resettlement starts on the first day in the army; we are all (eventually) service leavers.. is not, therefore, a process exclusively for the concluding year(s) of service…

Rs 25,000 per month is a substantial budget that can get you a large-sized accommodation in a prestigious colony. In south Delhi you can get a two- or three-bedroom builder apartment. These will stand on a plot size of 200-215 sq yd, and will ahve a built-up area of around 1,300-1,500 sq ft. These options are available in Defence Colony and GK-I.

Central Delhi has two-bedroom builder floors available in East Patel Nagar and New Rajendra Nagar. The built-up area of the apartment is 1,600 sq ft. In addition to the two bedrooms, the apartment has a large drawing-dining space. The construction, however, is around 5-10 years old.

In west Delhi, try a well-established colony like Paschim Vihar. Here you get a lavish, five-bedroom apartment for this budget. The plot area is 400 sq yd and the built-up area is around 2,500 sq ft.

The suburbs offer larger accommodation. Says Rajiv Mehrotra of Sunshine Enterprises: In Noida you can opt for a 300 sq m (360 sq yd) kothi having ground floor construction. Alternatively, you can opt for a four-bedroom apartment built on a 450 sq m (540 sq yd) plot. This apartment will have a built-up area of 2,900 sq ft.

To Gurgaon next. The normal rental range for apartments here is Rs 8,000-17,000. For Rs 25,000, you get a large-sized kothi. DLF Phase I offers a 350 sq yd kothi having a ground-floor construction. In sector 40, you get a 250 sq yd kothi with fully constructed ground and first floors.

Though most marketers have a way of focusing on the headline numbers, as the recent reports of Indicus Analytics The Market Skyline of India 2006 show, this can be quite misleading. The Mumbai Suburban district, for instance, is the countrys biggest market at Rs 39,484 crore this year but, for someone like Mukesh Ambani, who aims to become Indias Sam Walton, surely what is more relevant is the size of the catchment area around a store that he sets up, the sales per square kilometre. Measure it this way, and it is the traditionally disregarded East Delhi district that comes out tops with sales of Rs 149 crore per square kilometre this year. This is ironic since East Delhi hardly has any shopping malls. The other irony, in the same context, is that neighbouring Gurgaon is seen as one of the more happening markets, given the sprouting of shopping malls there, but Gurgaon offers a market density of only Rs 1.8 crore per square kilometre, compared to Rs 5 crore for Ghaziabad (neighbouring East Delhi), which is not seen to be in the same class. For a purveyor of slightly more upmarket goods, on the other hand, whats important is that a third of Bangalore families earn more than Rs 3 lakh a year, compared to only 20 per cent for Mumbai Suburban.

Gurgaon: Nineteen probables for the Indian hockey team to participate in the World Cup arrived in Gurgaon on Wednesday, minus ace drag-flicker Sandeep Singh, whos out of contention due to the bullet injury he suffered on Tuesday.

India have called up Jugraj Singh and Vikramjeet Singh. These two will fight it out with Raghunath to fill in the void created by the unfortunate injury to Sandeep whos still under treatment at the PGI hospital, and is reportedly out of danger.

The team will leave for Germany later on Thursday. India will play some practice matches against Belgium in the run-up to the World Cup that starts from the September 6.

CNN-IBNs Digvijay Singh Deo spoke to national coach Vasudevan Bhaskaran and began by asking him about the blow to the team because of Sandeep Singhs injury.

NEW DELHI: The Germany-bound Indian hockey team is yet to come to terms with the freak accident that has ruled out drag-flicker Sandeep Singh from the World Cup campaign.

We will have to rework our strategy as regards to set pieces as Sandeep was the key factor in the triangle involving Arjun Halappa and Tushar Khandekar, said the Chief Coach of the team, V. Baskaran at Gurgaon on Wednesday, and added he did not want to present his absence as an excuse beforehand.

However, Baskaran said that his task had become tougher as he had worked very hard with the drag-flicker over the last four months.

When I took over, he (Sandeep) was not in the starting eleven, but I knew he was the man who can get goals and shouldnt be sitting out, Baskaran said.

On Wednesday, the 17-member team assembled at the Nehru Stadium in Gurgaon and the coach worked out different strategies on penalty corner conversions.