By Henry Foy and Ketan Bondre MUMBAI | Wed May 9, 2012 12:03pm IST MUMBAI (Reuters) - At the opening ceremony for Daimler AG's (DAIGn.DE) $850 million India factory, Chairman Dieter Zetsche stepped down from the cab of a gleaming yellow 25-tonne truck with scaled-down horsepower, a stripped-back gearbox and no sign of the iconic Mercedes-Benz three-pointed star on its grille. Daimler has been assembling high-end trucks in India for years, but its recently launched cut-price BharatBenz line has joined a trend by global heavy equipment manufacturers to compete in India's high-volume, high-growth - but cost-conscious - mass market.The potential is huge. Truck sales alone grew 18 percent in the year to March 2012 to over 800,000 vehicles, and are expected to double to 1.6 ... Continue reading →

By Swati Pandey and Vidya Ranganathan MUMBAI | Tue Mar 13, 2012 10:22am IST MUMBAI (Reuters) - With more than a quarter of a billion customers, the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India has once again dug into its pockets to prop up its financially-strapped owner. Policyholders in LIC, a behemoth that's little known outside the country, could be forgiven for watching with a helpless sense of déjà vu.LIC has bailed out the government before. It bought shares in state-owned banks in 2009. In 2010, it bought the government's stake in a mining firm. This time, it is injecting a billion dollars into some state banks. It has also bought out part of the government's stake in an oil firm.Taxpayers should have been outraged at ... Continue reading →