Toyota Motors recently announced its plans to hike its production capacity in India more than ten-fold, in an attempt to make further inroads into the growing Indian car market.

While most foreign car makers like General Motors, Suzuki and Hyundai have grown rapidly investing huge amounts in escalating capacity, Toyota had in the past moved more cautiously. But not anymore.

The Company plans to escalate production from the current 50,000 to six lakh units by 2015 and may even introduce new models in India, in an attempt to boost its market share from the current 3.7 % to no less than 15%.

The local unit, Toyota Kirloskar located at Bangalore currently manufactures the Sedan ‘Corolla’ and multipurpose vehicle ‘Innova’. The higher end ‘Camry’ sedan and ‘Land Cruiser Prado’ SUV are sold through the import route.

Nicholas Piramal India Ltd. (NPIL) recently received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to clinically test its lead cancer compound for multiple myeloma, a severe form of blood cancer, in the United States.

This is the first investigational new drug application (IND) approval granted to an Indian pharma company to test its new chemical entity (NCE) among the US population.

The IND clearance allows for clinical trials of the new drug in three phases, involving various toxicity and safety studies conducted on human subjects.

Calling it a major milestone for Indian research Swati Piramal, director, strategic alliances, NPIL said- the USFDA approval was “a testament to the world-class quality of the regulatory compliance and pre-clinical studies that were completed entirely by the Indian scientific team of NPIL."