FORTUNE India 500: 2011 Rankings unveiled!

FORTUNE India magazine has released the FORTUNE 500 India list for 2011 with its December issue. It comes as no surprise that the list is dominated by the oil and gas sector, led by Indian Oil Corporation, Reliance Industries, and Bharat Petroleum Corporation.

The banking sector seems to have dropped in rankings, with the top two lenders, SBI (ranked 4) and ICICI Bank (12), slipping in 2011. Twenty-eight of 46 banks have fallen; only 15 have gone up on the list. The gainers are automobile firms and their ancillary suppliers. The government continues to play a big role in business, with a total of 82 government-owned companies on this year's list.

Mumbai has remained the natural home of India Inc. despite the growth of other cities. Over a third of companies in our list, 177 to be precise, are headquartered in the financial capital. This is followed by Delhi and its suburbs, which hosts 111 corporate head offices. Surprisingly, Kolkata continues to be a major corporate city with 38 Fortune India 500 companies, ahead of IT capital Bangalore (25 headquarters) and Chennai with 34. Pune, Ahmedabad, and Hyderabad are far behind, home to 22, 19, and 17 firms respectively.

D.N. Mukerjea, editor, FORTUNE India, said "The Fortune India 500 is a celebration of the size and might of India's companies. Over the last year, the 500 largest corporations have grown in sales by 21.5%; the median growth has been even higher, at about 25%. Such statistics are impressive, no doubt. There also appears to be a fair degree of churn”there are 57 new companies, around 11% of the list. That's always a good sign because it indicates that the laggards are falling by the way, to be replaced by smarter and hungrier ones."

Commenting on the release of the second FORTUNE India 500 list, Pavan Varshnei, President ' FORTUNE India said, "We're extremely proud to present the second edition of Fortune India 500 list. Fortune 500 is regarded as the global benchmark of business success which every corporation aims to achieve. We would like to congratulate all the corporations who've made it to the list this year and hope they will continue to shape the world's opinion of India's growth story."

The Fortune India 500, published by FORTUNE India magazine is an annual list compiled on the basis of latest sales and gross revenue figures. It ranks the top 500 Indian companies (publicly and privately-held companies for which revenues are publicly available) by their gross revenue after adjustments. For a sense of perspective, the special issue also features China's 500 largest corporations as well as a list of the 75 largest corporations of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) countries along with the Fortune India 500.

Reliance Industries

State Bank of India

Tata Motors

Tata Steel

Coal India

ICICI Bank

Larsen & Toubro

Steel Authority of India (SAIL)

Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited (MRPL)

TCS