With a $100 million investment in the pipeline from the mother company in South Korea and the market warming up to the cute (but tough) small car Matiz, managing director SG Awasthi is aiming for big time. The investment will take the company's equity capital to Rs 1,100 crore up from Rs 700 crore.

On the cards is an ambitious online sales portal that will be available at the company's interactivewebsite to be flagged off by the end of this year. With its sights set on a Rs 1,000 crore turnover, the company hopes to put around another 50,000 Matiz on the roads here by the end of fiscal 1999-2000. While in 1996-97 it did manage to clock Rs 945 crore (see chart), it took a beating as the economy slowed down.

Also, senior company officials tacitly admit that market perceptions had indeed slowed down the carmaker. While Awasthi studiously avoided commenting on the competitors' (read Maruti and Hyundai) strategies with regard to Daewoo, other officials pulled no punches at what they said were ``rumours being spread by the competition''.

To counter the negative perception about the company's vehicles, DMIL is putting together a comprehensive strategy to ``educate the customer''. With demand for Matiz having shot up by 25 per cent in the domestic market, the small car is obviously the trump card Awasthi is hoping will bring in the chips. While the recently launched Nexia is revving up to take on themid-size luxury players including the Honda City and Mitsubishi Lancer, the volumes will come from Matiz.

DMIL has for long been dogged by the low mileage figures returned by the early batches of the Cielo that the company attributes to the varying fuel quality between petrol-pumps. However, it claims to have fixed the glitch and the figures are now said to be comparable with other cars in the segment.

A visiting media team from Bangalore was taken through an elaborate presentation at DMIL's Surajpur facility near New Delhi on the features and benefits of the Matiz, Cielo Executive and Nexia. The point of the exercise was to prove the cars' superiority over the competition -- which is what Daewoo now plans to do in the market.

Part of the plan to educate the car-buyer includes a campaign to create awareness about the safety features that the company says are by far superior to the competition.

While exports will play a key role in the company's marketing game plan, Awasthi said they wouldn't pushoverseas sales ``at the expense of the domestic car-buyer''.

Following the company's proactive (and aggressive) pricing response in April this year to the cuts announced by Maruti on the eve of the launch of the Tata Indica, Matiz now comes in four options ranging from Rs 2.67 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi) for the base model to Rs 3.68 lakh for the fully-loaded top-end version.

All its cars being Euro-II compliant, DMIL sees it as an edge over Hyundai (which is charging buyers Rs 12,000 more for models that meet the emission standards) and Maruti which continues to offer carburettors instead of the cleaner multi-point fuel injection (MPFI) technology that Daewoo uses.

And as Daewoo Motors readies its marketing arsenal and guns its engines for the next round of battle in the automart, the competition had better keep an eye on its rear-view mirror.