Venturing into the highly-competitive electronic

retail segment , city-based diversified business

conglomerate Baid Group today said it would pump in Rs 250 crore within the next three to five years to open 500 stores across the

country.

"By the end of this financial year, we will have 50 electronic retail stores and by the next three to five years, the total number of stores will increase to 500 at an investment of Rs 250 crores,"

Baid Group Managing Director Pushpesh Baid told media here.

"We will expand the store chain to 200 cities and

towns in the Tier-C and Tier-B segment. Instead of

the metro cities, we are going to be very aggressive in smaller cities and towns,

which are seeing a very high rate of growth in

electronic sales," Baid said.

Chinese automaker China First Automobile Works Group (FAW) is

poised to begin delivering China's first

indigenously-developed and -manufactured fire

truck. The company, based in Changchun City in northeast China's Jilin Province, will deliver 106

fire engines to five provinces by the end of Feb. 2011, a FAW official

said Monday.

FAW and the Department of Public Security of Jilin jointly

developed the high-end fire truck, said Zhao

Fangkuan, CPC secretary of FAW. In recent years,

Chinese fire brigades have purchased over

1,500 fire trucks annually, either

importing them or buying modified ordinary trucks.

"FAW fire truck parts, including the chassis, are specially designed for the

fire-fighting mission, and they are much

cheaper than imported fire engines," said Zhao. FAW expects to expand its annual fire engine

production capacity to 1,000 units by 2012.

The world's largest automaker also raised its annual net profit

forecast to 350 billion yen from 340 billion

yen forecast in August -- despite battling a strong yen and the

effects of a safety recall crisis earlier this year.

Toyota Motor on Friday reported a

net profit of 289.16 billion yen (3.6

billion dollars) for the fiscal first half, compared with a

net loss of nearly 66 billion yen in the

same period a year earlier.

Toyota posts

first half net

profit of $3.6 bn

Diversified business firm

Videocon Industries today

posted a 7.1-per cent increase

in its net profit to Rs 159.92

crore in the quarter ended

September 30, over the same

period last fiscal.

The company had a net

profit of Rs 149.26 crore in

the September 30, 2009,

Videocon Industries said in

a filing to the Bombay Stock

Exchange.

During the quarter, the

company's income from

operations stood at Rs 2,985.46

crore, a 13.89-per cent increase

from Rs 2,621.24 crore

recorded in the corresponding

period last fiscal.