India Inc’s presence has grown in the Global Fortune 500 club with the debut of Tata Steel but its top seven entities collectively too are no match to global leader Wal-Mart, which is entering the country in partnership with Sunil Mittal’s Bharti group.
The combined size of the seven Indian members in the league of Global Fortune 500 is less than 60 per cent of the turnover of the numero-uno Wal-Mart.
As per the latest global rankings released on Wednesday by the US business magazine Fortune, which is based on the companies’ annual revenue, there are now seven Indian companies in this league, up from six last year. Together these seven companies — Indian Oil Corp, Reliance Industries, BPCL, HPCL, Tata Steel , ONGC and SBI — have a turnover of $221.07 billion.
In comparison, Wal-Mart has retained its top position in the list with an annual turnover $378.8 billion. Excluding IOC, ranked at top among Indian companies, the six other Indian companies have a turnover of less than one-tenth of that of Wal-Mart. Including Wal-Mart, as many as five companies globally have a higher revenue than the combined turnover of seven Indian firms.
These firms include ExxonMobil, ranked second after Wal-Mart with a revenue of $372.8 billion, Royal Dutch Shell (3rd with $355.7 billion), BP (4th with $291.4 billion) and Toyota Motors (5th with $230.20 billion). Besides Wal-Mart, the second-ranked ExxonMobil also has a size more than ten times of all the Fortune 500 companies from India except for IOC.
IOC has been ranked 116th with a turnover of $57.4 billion and is followed by RIL at 206th ($35.9 billion), Bharat Petroleum at 287th ($27.8 billion), Hindustan Petroleum at 290th ($27.8 billion), Tata Steel at 315th ($25.6 billion), ONGC at 335th ($24 billion) and SBI at 380th ($22.4 billion).
Riding high on the fastest revenue growth among the world’s 500 biggest companies, Tata Steel has debuted on the list at 315th position. Last year, SBI had debuted in the list, taking the total Indian strength to six companies.