ET 500 2011: Letter from the editor

It has been a year in which the best of Indian corporates have chosen to conserve cash rather than invest because of the crippling global uncertainty and policy inertia at home. India’s top companies, excluding banks, are sitting on a cash pile of over $46 billion or Rs 4.7 lakh crore which in normal times could have been used to build power plants, airports and roads. To most, it was a wasted year.

But amidst an air of gloom and doom, there are many companies in the ET 500 list which have shown enough pluck, with one of the most spectacular being mortgage lender HDFC, and the other being an emerging steel biggie, JSW Steel. There was hardly any change at the top of the pecking order with oil companies and a clutch of banks dominating the list with Tata Motors being the only non-commodity manufacturing firm among the top ten. But there was also a shake-out in the top 50 with firms such as Reliance Communications, Reliance Infrastructure and Suzlon sliding in the backdrop of execution issues and a debt overhang. There are several new faces in the list like Jaypee Infratech, which put India on the F1 map with its Buddh track in Noida.

There were positive stories too — stories of top quality companies prudently using investors’ money to generate considerable wealth. We have listed the top companies which have posted the most impressive returns on equity (ROE) over a five-year period. Also, there’s a profile of a dozen most promising firms — a combination of the well-established and the derring-dos — who we reckon will stay on top of the game over the next decade. Though a few of them are yet to break into the big league of ET 500, we have taken a judgemental call and decided to go with them, given their desire to dominate — not just the local markets but also the competitive global stage — and the huge promise they have shown to pull things off.

At a time when our home-grown companies are talking of investing overseas, put off by local hurdles, we have revisited the issue of domestic groups taking their best practices to the world. Besides featuring the fastest growing companies in the universe of ET 500, the edition also identifies the new growth drivers for financial services providers in the decade ahead.

To check the complete ET 500 list, click here

For ET500 2011 full coverage, click here