I usually scan through the pink papers in under 5 minutes. But this morning I picked up the annual "ET 500" report (free with do rupaye ka ET every year) and actually spent over an hour poring through it. Just.
It's fascinating for many reasons. The # 1 company in India, by revenue, is IndianOil. Its revenues of Rs 290, 946 crores are double of the # 2 company Reliance Industries (Rs 153, 138 crores). But Reliance profits are 5 times that of IndianOil www.icocl.com (Rs 15, 296 crores vs Rs 2,599 crores).
Both companies are in the very same space (oil & gas). And no, I am not saying Indian Oil should be 'doing better' - that would be comparing apples to oranges!
A few other facts which caught my eye:
* 6 out of top 10 companies are PSUs - that's pretty much the story, every year.
* Only 1 out of the top 20 companies is what you can call entrepreneurial (started by a first generation entrepreneur in last 20 years). That company is Bharti Airtel. In fact such companies are pretty much non existent even in top 100.
Infosys (# 22), Pantaloons (# 73) and Kotak Mahindra bank (# 75) are the few exceptions although technically, they're all over 20 years old.
* Bharti Airtel and TCS are the only two companies from 'new age industries' in the top 20 (Wipro & Infosys are # 22 and 29 respectively). Oil, steel, auto, banking, power, capital goods dominate the top 50.
Interestingly, apart from ITC (# 35) and HLL (#36) and a few banks like ICICI bank (# 10), HDFC bank (#29), Kotak Mahindra bank (# 66) and maybe an Asian Paints (#95) and Reliance in its myriad avatars - you won't see any of the top 100 companies on this list on India's top 20 bschool campuses.
Except in a recession year (like this one).
And even then, they aren't places MBAs would like to join.
Which brings me to the question: is there a disconnect between bschools and the business realities of India? For long, bschools have been accused of producing 'managers' not entrepreneurs. Ok - but even within that definition, they want to be managers only in certain kinds of companies and sectors.
I understand there are cultural issues. That the majority of these top 100 and even top 500 companies are old (if this was a gathering of people you would see mostly grey hair!) A large number are fuddy duddy, family or government run enterprises.
But surely these are the very places where so called modern management principles and bright young men and women can make a difference - in the longer run.
It would be interesting if ET could come out with a report on how many MBAs the top 500 companies in India today employ. And what is the profile of the people they do employ.
Cynics might wonder whether these companies are healthy because of lack of MBAs... There's a thesis waiting to be written by someone, somewhere, on that!
Lastly, I noticed 5 companies from the 25 Stay Hungry profiles make it to the list (not counting Sintex, where Dangayach is not the owner). The highest ranked is Shree Renuka Sugars art # 227.
Am sure there are other interesting stories hidden in this list... and I'm sure someday I will tell some of them :)
