This is Big

Our third annual ranking is out. It took us months to get here—but it has been a rewarding journey. We hope that you find our entrepreneurial heroes as fascinating as we do.

It’s been a year of intense economic upheaval. Undoubtedly, 2011 will be remembered in economic and political history as a time when seemingly unimaginable events occurred.

Take the United States of America, for example. The global giant was jolted to its very core by twin assaults on its economic health—the protracted debt crisis and Standard & Poor’s subsequent downgrading of its 70-year-old AAA rating. That US Treasury bonds would ever cease to be the safest investment in the world wasn’t an eventuality any economic forecast would’ve possibly put forward. Meanwhile, European countries continued their downward spiral.

Fortunately, India continued to grow amid this gloom, albeit at a slower pace. In fact, it seems global conditions have only made our entrepreneurs smarter. There’s still a latent positivity, but one that has benefited from the realisation that obstacles do exist and established success paths can go wrong. There’s also the understanding that Indian businesses are incredibly wellplaced to take advantage of global conditions. Ask the honourees who make up our list of the fastest-growing mid-sized companies in India. Many of them might not be on any public radar but they are silently and effectively scripting our country’s next chapters of growth. Even as Indian GDP grew by 8.5 per cent, the top 50 companies on our list clocked a healthy upswing of 187 per cent in turnover in the past three years.

Inc. India launched its annual 500 ranking of mid-sized companies in 2009. With each year, we’ve added value to our rankings. Encouraged by the feedback, in our third annual edition, we’ve really pushed the envelope. This ranking is our bravest yet, mainly because it includes a much larger chunk of privately-held, unlisted companies. In our survey last year, a few more than 400 of the 500 companies on our list were listed entities. We’ve dramatically changed that composition. By putting in the filter that subsidiary companies of groups larger than Rs 1,500 crore should not be considered, we brought down the number of listed companies to 200 this year. The remaining 300 are public unlisted and privately-held companies, gleaned from our database of more than 3,500 companies. It’s certainly added that zing of freshness to our list. Take the No. 1, 2 and 3 companies on our list. Between them, they’ve grown 530 per cent in three ears, but in all likelihood few of us had ever heard of them before. Vikas Global One, our No. 1 this year, is more than an Inc. India debutante. For Vikas Garg, the company’s 38-year-old MD, this was also his first full-fledged media interview.

This is what drives us at Inc. India—navigating through uncharted territory to discover centres of excellence. On paper, there are around 850,000 registered companies in India. Yet, other than the top 100—the ones that regularly inhabit the pages of our mainstream business press—precious little is known about the huge ocean of enterprises. By law, Indian private companies aren’t mandated to share their financials. That made the task of unearthing audited data even more challenging. But our efforts have been rewarding. For starters, this year’s list is definitely more diverse. Similar to the previous two rankings, IT&ITeS continues to be the top sector with 11.6 per cent of the total companies. But, several chemical, oil and gas and FMCG companies have found their way into the list this year. In fact, FMCG accounts for 8 per cent of the total companies.

Amid the excitement, there are also improvement areas. As mid-sized enterprises chase growth, issues like standardisation and best-practices, especially in financial governance are definite to-dos our companies might want to take a look at. Our team went through thousands of balance sheets and found many of them to be outdated templates. Alignment with global financial reporting standards will undoubtedly help these companies present a better business case when they go out to bid for international contracts or seek out capital.

The Inc. India 500 holds a mirror to the future of Indian business. It’s gratifying to see the rise of mid-sized enterprises beyond the “more popular” IT&ITeS. The emergence of many “old-new” firms (in the steel, gas and FMCG sectors) could be a pointer to the strengths of Indian enterprises and an opportunity to establish new outposts. Our stories with these entrepreneurs also reveal a quiet confidence that their time has arrived and they’re ready to lead the charge.

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