Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) conferred honorary Doctor of Literature degrees on Chairman Ratan Tata and Baba Amte for their outstanding contribution to society. Prime minister Manmohan Singh presented the awards.

Tata Motors floated a 51:49 joint venture company with Brazil's Marcopolo. The company plans to set up a facility in India within a year, where it will manufacture and assemble fully built buses and coaches.

Marcopolo is a leading global company specialised in body-building for buses and coaches. It has four manufacturing facilities in Brazil and one each in Portugal, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia and South Africa. India will be its tenth production base.

"The rapidly expanding and improving road network, connecting cities and also rural areas, is expected to substantially grow passenger transport. The JV with Marcopolo, which is one of the largest bus body builders, will enable Tata Motors to successfully address the growing demand in India, as well as relevant markets abroad," said Tata Motors chairman Ratan Tata.

Tata Motors also launched the Tata Ace in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is the first country where the Ace been launched besides India, and Ace is the first such vehicle to be introduced in the country.

Titan Industries has, through its affiliates, bought a 5-per cent equity stake in Innoviti Embedded Solutions, a promising start-up in the consumer wireless products space.

Innoviti's products 'vaayu' and 'payezee', which have been designed in India and marketed under Innoviti's brand name, have been introduced in the US and Asia Pacific markets over the past twelve months and are rapidly gaining market share.

Innoviti is today working on next generation wireless technologies, specifically those targeted at smart personal objects and next generation mobile networks.