is that of a small car export house how do you see the scale of small cars in the overseas market given the entry level demand is under pressurethe definition of small car is different in different countries for example europe is pretty well developed but quite a large percentage of vehicles sold there are hatches suvs of course have gone up across the globe and as far as india is concerned hatches have remained relatively steady in the last fourandahalf years at around 45 of the market share advt however last year it had come down and the discussion is now hovering about why the small car market in india has not grown as much as it should have and we are clear that it is largely because the acquisition cost has gone up and the price elasticity for this consumer in this segment is actually quite high that means that the sensitivity to increase in price in response to commodity price hikes or any other input cost increase whether due to government regulation or taxes or insurance or financing cost affects this customer mostthat is the reason why we see in the last five years the cost of acquisition of small cars the entry hatches have gone up almost 40 and that has resulted in a dip in the sales for the hatch segment this is the central issue which we have been conveying to the media at large and how we are trying to overcome this by focussing our efforts on other segmentsyou have been getting discount levels lower in order to boost sales are you planning to take that lower or we can see some range the discount levels you are referring to are a function of supply and demand at the moment the overall demand seems to be high even as we speak we have almost 311000 pending bookings in case of a supplydemand mismatch the discount will be lower and i am expecting that to continue for some time to come till the situation on the supply side normalises so whether it is rural or urban today it is not a question of lowering the cost of acquisitionone can increase the discount levels but even if you have a larger demand you may not be able to fulfil it as is reflected in the 311000 pending bookings that we have in fact for the industry the estimate is that almost fiveandahalf lakh bookings are pending for deliverywhat is happening with chip shortage are there further pressures or things are as is where do this stand currentlythe situation remains roughly the same remember the visibility in terms of available for semiconductor component is still limited which means that it is difficult to give a longterm projection of when it will normalise and also to tell whether two months down the line it will be normal or not that is why we are updating our consumers and also to all the stakeholders whether it