The new low-cost carrier, IndiGo, which placed India’s biggest orders for 100 Airbus aircraft at the Paris Air Show last year, will start operations in July-August with its own aeroplanes."The delivery of our first aircraft will take place some time in July and we will start operations soon thereafter. We plan to start between July 1 and August 5," the airline’s president and CEO Bruce Ashby said.

The budget carrier has placed orders for 100 aircraft of the A-320, A-319 and A-321 make, which belong to the same family having several commonalities especially that of the cockpit. Mr Ashby said the planes would be delivered one each month from July till the year-end and another nine next year. On an average, ten aircraft would be delivered each year for the next ten years, he said.

On the pricing of tickets, he said it would be consistent with fares being offered by the low-cost carriers in the Indian market like SpiceJet and Air Deccan and "a lot less lower than the legacy carriers like Indian, Air India, Jet Airways and Air Sahara." The airline had recently submitted its flight schedules for mandatory clearances.

Business software maker Oracle Corp. said on Thursday that it will cut about 2,000 jobs, or more than three per cent of its work force, as it digs for bigger profits from its recent $5.85 billion takeover of Siebel Systems Inc.The California-based Oracle inherited 4,700 Siebel workers in the acquisition, but most of the cuts will be concentrated among emplo-yees on the company payroll before the deal closed last week, chief executive Larry Ellison told analysts during a conference call.

About 90 per cent of Sieb-el’s customer support, engineering and sales staff is being retained, Mr Ellison said. After the purge is completed, Oracle will employ 55,000 workers worldwide, according to Safra Catz, Oracle’s chief financial officer. The cost cutting should lower Oracle’s expenses by at least $400 million annually, Catz said.Oracle already has handed out pink slips to some of the affected employees and expects to complete most of the layoffs during the next few weeks, spokesman Bob Wynne said.

The job cuts fell within the range projected by industry analysts nearly five months ago when Oracle announced plans to buy Siebel, a once-bitter rival that had been mired in a deep sales slump.

Besides providing details about the reduction, Oracle also lowered its profit projections for the rest of its fiscal year. Excluding acquisition charges and other expe-nses to its continuing business, Oracle expects to earn 18 cents per share during the current quarter, a penny below the average estimate among analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial.

In the following quarter, Oracle expects to earn 26 cents per share, excluding certain expenses, also a pen-ny below analyst estimates.

Oracle’s shares gained 12 cents to close at $12.69 on the Nasdaq Stock Market, then backtracked by 8 cents in extended trading.