India's Tata Motors is in talks with a local manufacturer in Iran to set up a joint venture for assembling its petrol cars here, as it looks to tap the fast growing market that has just emerged from sanctions.

Tata Motors is talking to Iran Khodro company for a joint venture to assemble knocked down units of the petrol versions of its models, including the latest compact car Tiago, Bolt and Zest, which are powered by the company's new Revotron petrol engines, sources said here. Knocked down version of the cars will be imported and assembled at Iran Khodro's manufacturing facility after adding local contents like tyres and batteries.

Tata Motors plans to raise Rs 300 crore through issuance of second series of non-convertible debentures (NCDs) to bankroll its expansion plan.

The fund-raising is part of the company's plan to mop up Rs 4,400 crore through issuance of NCDs in one or more tranches on a private placement basis.

Tata Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) on Monday posted a 11 per cent increase in its April sales at 41,341 units, helped by incremental volumes of the new compact Jaguar XE.

Retail sales for the month of April were up year-on-year across all regions 25 per cent in the UK, 11 per cent in China, 10 per cent in Europe and two per cent in North America.

While Indian pharmaceutical companies and infotech companies are leading India Inc in research and development (R&D) expenses and patent applications, but a majority of local companies are lagging global peers in R&D spending.

According to statistics of the stock exchanges, pharmaceutical firm, Lupin spent the most in R&D as percentage of its net sales (8.9 per cent), Tata Motors spent the maximum in value terms (Rs 2,200 crore) in the financial year 2015.

Shares of Tata Motors gained over 3% after the company reported a 9.9% growth in sales at 39,763 units in April against 36,190 units during the same month last year.

After a positive opening, the shares of the company climbed 3.57% to Rs 421.85 on the BSE. At the National Stock Exchange (NSE), it rose by 3.5% to Rs 422.

Tata Motors has secured a patent for its invention regarding an auto stop-start control system for manual transmission vehicles which provides fuel economy with minimal change in driver behaviour.

The desi auto firm claims that the objectives of the present invention are to provide an auto stop-start system for manual transmission vehicles in which an auto stop is prevented from occurring if the engine speed is above the idle speed, and to provide a simple and cost effective vehicle auto stop-start control system.

Tata Motors on Wednesday said it has raised Rs 300 crore by issuing non-convertible debentures (NCDs) on private placement basis.

A meeting of a duly authorised committee approved the issuance of privately placed 3,000 NDCs of face value of Rs 10 lakh each at par aggregating up to Rs 300 crore, the company said in a BSE filing.

Tata Motors, India's largest automobile company, is undergoing a slow but steady transformation in its cars to woo more women customers.

As the company spokesperson said: "Gears are finally shifting in the automotive marketing world's attitude towards women, showcasing that women represent a huge opportunity for this industry".

Mumbai: Tata Motors Ltd in a notification to the stock exchanges said on 23 April that company’s senior executives and directors will meet on 27 April to consider issuance of rated, listed, unsecured, redeemable, non convertible debentures aggregating up to Rs.300 crore.

It’s part of a plan to issue secured, unsecured non convertible debentures of up to Rs.4,400 crores for the tenure in the range of 2 to 10 years.

Tata Motors is closely watching the autonomous-driving technologies being developed globally by the likes of Daimler, Google, Tesla and its own subsidiary, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR). The homegrown automobile major wants to bring driver-assistance functions such as collision avoidance and automated parking to its cars in India.

"There's clearly a movement globally towards more and more autonomy and eventually autonomous cars will come. It's important for us in India to understand the technologies behind that (autonomous driving) and that it will come into our market gradually," said Tim Leverton, head of advanced and product engineering.

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