Indian firms vie for top spot

NEW DELHI: Tata Consultancy Services, the business solutions group, has overtaken Reliance Industries, the conglomerate, to become India's biggest company, new figures show. 

Business Today, the magazine, assessed the average market capitalisation of the country's largest corporations between April and September 2012, and pegged this figure at Rs2.44tr for Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). 
  
Natarajan Chandrasekaran, chief executive of TCS, said: "The variables you have to drive and focus on every day are relevancy to the customer, assembling the team and giving it the opportunity,"

Its client roster features GE, the American conglomerate, Citibank and JPMorganChase, the banking giants, Home Depot, the DIY chain, Moody's, the ratings agency, and PepsiCo, the food and beverage manufacturer.

"TCS does analytics, difficult specialty applications such as transportation optimisation systems," said Caroline Watteeuw, PepsiCo's global chief technology officer. "We have only recently started working with them but they are very impressive."

Reliance Industries, active in sectors from energy to retail, claimed second place in the rankings on Rs2.42tr, having held top spot for each of the last nine years.

While the company boasts strengths including a substantial cash pile, annual profits have declined over four successive quarters and its share price has fallen by 24.4% since November 2009.

A key reason for this was argued to be competition in the crude refining and natural gas industries. Its telecoms arm is also “yet to take off” and a move into financial services remains a “work in progress”.

Sudeep Anand, an analyst with IDBI Capital Market Services, said: "We do not expect the retail and telecom businesses to contribute more than eight to ten per cent of RIL'S financial year 2017 EBITDA [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization]." 

Other leading firms included Oil & Natural Gas Corporation, valued at R 2.32tr and Coal India on Rs1.95tr. These two energy firms came in ahead of ITC, the FMCG-to-hotels group on Rs1.95tr.

Insfosys, a rival to Tata Consultancy Services, was on Rs1.38tr, a total matched by the State Bank of India. HDFC Bank followed next on 1.32tr, having been one of the few big financial players to see year on year growth.

Data sourced from Business Today; additional content by Warc staff, 26 October 2012

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