India’s Super 50 Companies 2016 – Forbes India Magazine

Forbes India, along with PwC, employed a three pronged approach with data over a three year period to come up this list of India’s Super 50 Companies.

“A sharp focus on capital efficiency, innovation and customer centricity defines this year’s Super 50 companies. Despite their diverse nature, these common threads make these companies benchmarks in excellence,” Forbes India Editor Sourav Majumdar said.

The high point of the list is the notable absence of many high profile Indian companies such as Tata Motors, Hindustan Unilever, MRF, Glaxo SmithKline Consumer Healthcare, Pfizer, Dr Reddy’s Labs, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, HDFC and Kotak Mahindra Bank.

At the same time, the list has welcomes some new companies in the list in its 2nd year of listing. Some of them are : Infosys, Maruti Suzuki, Bharat Forge, Alembic Pharma, Gillette India, HDFC Bank, Bajaj Finance, Kansai Nerolac and LIC Housing Finance.

According to Dinesh Arora, Partner—Corporate Finance & Investment Banking, PWC India; there are some common strategic traits exhibited by the achiever companies in the list. Some of them are:

1. Active in M&A space: Nearly 60% of these companies have acquired companies in last 3 years. %0% of them have done it overseas.
2. Investment in R&D: Nearly 60% of these companies have reported a significant investment in RD infrastructure & initiatives. It ranges from 1.2% of their turnover to as high as 15% in case of one pharma company.
3. Debt-to-Equity Ratio: Many companies in the list have managed to perform well in terms of shareholder returns and ROE (Return on Equity) without going in for debt and relying in on internal accruals only. At least there are 6 companies in the list having zero debt on their books.

The Forbes India Super 50 Companies list enjoys a high credibility among corporate watchers who try to draw parallel with the American companies listed in its globally well known Forbes 500 list.