It have been discussed earlier
http://www.traderji.com/general-trading-investing-chat/39726-companies-whose-fds-have-gone-bad.html
Also u need to check the response here too
http://www.jagoinvestor.com/2010/04/are-company-fixed-deposit-safe.html
Regarding safety
1::Invest in good company with strong fundamental...Like mahindra and of tata motors...
2:: Dont make a 5 year commitment on such stuffs...at max 2 years....
3:: Dont go for extra high return compnies like giving 13,14 and 15% interest....And of those whose name u havent heard
4:
su banks give the lowest interest than any pvt banks....So investing in fds is better...But even better is stock...but invest in sound companies like TCS,wipro Reliance....But dont depend totally on that investment...Its good for money to grow but forget presently type....E.g my experience....When tcs started i invested in just 5 shares of it at 875 buks per share....Later dividend use to come every now and than...100-150 buks per year to be precise..And today i check that 5 shares have been converted to 20 now with price still being same ...In % wise good return
5::Even banks can default.....Govt only safeguard upto 1 lakh of the investment no matter how much above the sum u have...But banks which defaulted govt failed even to pay this basic 1 lakh...in case of kapol bank...Recently their was this news coming to raise the bar atleast to 2.5 lakhs...because of recession type stuff but govt didnot budge
Bottomline:: Its a good fd...but invest at max for 1 year...And ya dont invest more than 40-50k it...Company fds cut TDS at 5k annual interest...u need to check how good are they in giving u tds certificate on time....Another 40-50k u can invest in jp associates and unitech fd..provided u have their shares...They also are not fly by night type operator....But never make big investment ever in 1 company.....Personally my mom holds investment in tata motors fd for whose 1 year got completed we kept it for 3 years...Fd interest came on time in account...But initially it took 2 months to receive basic letter of investment ...We were worried whether we lost our money or not...