Telco figures in Fortune’s best bets for 1999 in Asia

Telco is poised to benefit from an expected turnaround in both the Indian stock market and the Indian economy, it says. "Telco’s stock has been cruelly punished — it is now trading at $ 3.50 a share, down about 80 per cent from its 1997 high — as manufacturing growth in India dropped to nearlyhalf the previous year’s level, and sales of its unglamorous trucks and buses plunged," says the article.

It has quoted analysts Warburg Dilon Read Securities as saying that a pick up in industrial growth in 1999 will mean more buyers for Telco’s heavy commercial vehicles, in which it is India’s undisputed market leader. The article sees extra spice to Telco’s stock coming from the Indica, its much anticipated $ 10,000 subcompact car. "It will go head to head against the phenomenally popular Maruti 800, which currently faces no real competition in the Indian subcompact market. With the marketing expertise of Jardine International Motors (Asia’s leading car distributor) behind the Indica and an upcoming barrage of ads hailing India’s first wholly indigenous car, Indica could be a big hit."