India Inc., take a bow. For, however much macroeconomists may try to explain away the general optimism all around us, and the economic boom by proffering statistics related to the monsoon and interest rates, fact is, much of the feel-good thing stems from a resurgent India Inc. Companies, as all publications, including the one in your hand, have pointed out, are returning never-before profits, many of them on increased revenues. It wasn't easy picking the fastest growing companies of 2003-04, but here, on the basis of a rigorous methodology involving revenue, operating profit, and net profit growth (See How We Did It) are the winners. Since every industry has its quirks, we've chosen to arrange them alphabetically, although a growth-based ranking can be found on page 80. Now, read on, as the rest of India Inc. eats the dust of the leaders.

-Narendra Nathan

Sanjay Labroo/CEO/ Asahi: They don't do it with mirrors; they use glass

ASAHI INDIA GLASS
It's All Reflected Glory

Sanjay Labroo is happy. Not just because Asahi India Glass has just announced a net profit of Rs 17.5 crore for the three months ended December 31, 2003-it did Rs 3.4 crore for the same period last year, but that was before it acquired Floatglass India-but because he sees signs of growth all around: new high-rises and crowded car parks. Glass is the new concrete, claims an Asahi ad and the construction activity around Labroo's office in Gurgaon bears this out. Most cars made in India use Asahi glass, and the company's second factory for automotive glass is coming up near Chennai. Better still, Labroo is convinced there is an opportunity in exports. "After all, we are a low-cost, high-skill, and high-production base," he says.

-Kushan Mitra

M.S. Ramachandran/CMD/IOC: Providence, and a dash of marketing savvy helped

BONGAIGAON REFINERY & PETROCHEMICALS
With A Little Help From Friends

BRPL has a chairman and managing Director (CMD), but it is M.S. Ramachandran, CMD, Indian Oil Corporation, which acquired a 74 per cent stake in it in 2001, who calls the shots. Helped by government decisions halving the excise duty on refineries in the North East by half and allowing BRPL to source oil from Andhra's Ravva oil-fields (the Assam fields are virtually dry and the refinery has never run to capacity in the past) and by IOC's marketing clout, BRPL returned a net profit of Rs 178.45 crore in 2002-03 as compared to losses of Rs 237 crore the previous year. Bravo!

-Ashish Gupta

Vinod Dasari/Joint Managing Director/ Cummins: Can't make enough engines!

CUMMINS INDIA
Growth Engine

India shining has meant more business for Cummins India-engines are somehow linked to economic growth-but it is exports that are clearly responsible for the company's faster-than-faster growth. Last year, these accounted for 20 per cent of Cummins' revenues of Rs 800 crore and the company expects them to grow by 30-40 per cent every year, helped along by outsourcing orders from the parent. "We shall now be meeting the entire global requirements for V-28 and K-38 engines from here in India," says Vinod Dasari, Joint Managing Director, Cummins India. Focus (the company concentrates on maximising volume and minimising volatility in demand) and cost reduction initiatives have also played a part in the company's success. "We are selling engines faster than we can make them," gushes an upbeat Dasari.

-Abir Pal

T.R. Mehta/Managing Director/Flat Products: Riding the steel boom

FLAT PRODUCTS EQUIPMENTS (INDIA)
A Core Of Steel

Those not in the know may be tempted to write off the growth of Flat Products Equipment-a steel plant installer-as fallout of the steel boom in India. That would be only partially right. For, by cutting teeth on local plants and allying with the right international companies-T Sendzimir Inc. of the US for cold rolling mills and France's Redex for stretch levelling equipment, for example-the company has managed to position itself as a global player. "We are recognised as a supplier of international quality equipment at competitive prices and this has resulted in large export orders," says T.R. Mehta, MD, Flat Products. Predictably, the company's order book of Rs 600 crore includes orders from Taiwan, China, Indonesia, Egypt, and Korea. That should explain the 265.7 per cent increase (to Rs 91.97 crore) in revenues the company posted for the three months ending September 30, 2003.

-Dipayan Baishya

Kuldeep Kaura/Managing Director/ HZL: Shining Zinc

HINDUSTAN ZINC
A Private Matter

There's a non-ferrous metals boom on, as evident in the rising price of zinc on the London Metals Exchange. That, though, isn't the only thing behind Hindustan Zinc Limited's (HZL) comeback. And what a comeback it has been: in the nine months ending December 31, 2003, the company registered revenues of Rs 1,324.3 crore and earned a net profit of Rs 318.7 crore; the corresponding figures for the previous year were Rs 910.3 crore and Rs 95.3 crore. The real reason for the turnaround is the fact that the erstwhile public sector company passed into private hands (Sterlite) in April 2002. "An increase in productivity through de-bottlenecking of plants and cost controls has helped us grow fast," says Kuldeep Kaura, Managing Director, HZL. And how!

-Roshni Jayakar

ELGI EQUIPMENTS
Compressed Logic

Like so many other companies in this listing, Elgi, a Coimbatore-based engineering and capital goods company, can credit its fast growth to a booming economy. Its customers include companies in the automotive, paints, engineering, cement, and petrochemical sectors. Still, there's only so much the company can grow in India: it boasts a 35 per cent share in a market that represents a mere 1 per cent of the global demand for compressors. "That means our global marketshare is only 0.35 per cent," says L.G. Varadarajulu, Chairman, Elgi, putting things in perspective. His argument: it is far easier to try and double this than grow share in India. That's exactly what the company is doing: in September 2003, it received a certification that will allow it to supply to American railroads. And it has entered into an arrangement with an American Fortune 500 company to supply 45,000 air compressors. "We will benefit from building volume-based competencies into our manufacturing process," says Jairam Varadaraj, MD, Elgi. He can say that again.

-Nitya Varadarajan

Vijay Kumar Gupta/CMD/Gujarat Ambuja Exports: The quiet exporter

GUJARAT AMBUJA EXPORTS
Economies Of Export

Gujarat Ambuja Exports (2002-03 revenues: Rs 621 crore) is one of those companies not too many people know too much about. For the record, the company, which has seen its net profit grow 161 per cent to Rs 16.97 crore in the first nine months of 2003-04 as compared to the same period last year, exports cotton yarn, oilseed, edible oils, starch and wheat products. And as its Chairman and Managing Director Vijay Kumar Gupta, points out, only 10 per cent of its revenues comes from trading operations (the rest is from manufacturing), a statistic, he says, that indicates the edge the exporter enjoys. Gujarat Ambuja Exports is still vulnerable to the commodity cycle, but the company is forging ahead with expanding capacities in the cotton yarn and maize-crushing business and has established beach heads in Singapore and Sri Lanka. Whoa!

-Roshni Jayakar

Arun Kumar/President & MD/HSS: The prudence-play

HUGHES SOFTWARE SYSTEMS
Getting Better All The Time

It must not have been easy for Hughes Software Systems to forsake the high ground of software product development for the low ground of business process outsourcing and software maintenance services. If it's any help, the growth post this event has been exceptional: in the three months ending December 31, 2003, the company reported a 70 per cent increase in revenues and a 110 per cent increase in net profit as compared to the corresponding period last year. Not that the company has completely abandoned the high ground. All through the downturn, it continued to spend 10 per cent of its turnover on R&D. "We have taken prudent decisions without sacrificing the future," says Arun Kumar, President and MD, HSS. It shows.

-Vandana Gombar

E. Sudhir Reddy/Vice Chairman & Managing Director/IVRCL: A mini-L&T in the making

IVRCL INFRASTRUCTURE & PROJECTS
Water To Wealth

The Indian government's ambitious golden quadrilateral (GQ) project has come as a boon to several engineering and construction companies, including Hyderabad-based IVRCL. However, what's really helped the company grow is its ability to nab what are called 'water projects', large engineering initiatives that have to do with water and sewage pipelines. The competition is a lot less intense in this business, and there's enough work going around. For instance, in 2003, IVRCL bagged a Rs 315.5-crore project from the Tamil Nadu government (Chennai Water Supply Augmentation Project) and a Rs 55-crore Gujarat Water Supply and Sewerage Board one. With projects on hand for some Rs 3,500 crore, Vice Chairman Sudhir Reddy hopes to close 2003-04 with revenues of Rs 700 crore.

-E. Kumar Sharma

P.T. Kuppuswamy/Chairman/Karur Vysya Bank: Contrarian play

KARUR VYSYA BANK
Counting on PSUs

Most banks that have grown rapidly over the past couple of years attribute this to the booming retail-banking business. Karur Vysya Bank, a Karur-based bank with deposits of Rs 5,121.92 crore in 2002-03 (in terms of deposits the bank is the forty fourth largest in the country), has always enjoyed significant retail play, but the company's Chairman, P.T. Kuppuswamy, would like to think something else is behind the bank's fast growth. "In the past two years, we grabbed opportunities thrown up by public sector companies (that were growing) and have been lending to them." And with the economy on a song, the bank is hoping its traditional strength of serving small and medium enterprises will help it grow even faster. It should.

-Nitya Varadarajan

R.C. Manusukhani/Chairman/Man Industries: 'Piping the world

MAN INDUSTRIES (INDIA)
No Pipedream This

If 2001 saw Indian Telcos pump thousands of kilometres of optic fibre into the ground, then, the past year-and-half have belonged to oil and gas companies building pipeline networks. Man Industries, a company that makes pipes supplies to pipelines being constructed by GAIL, IOC, and ONGC. And it is involved in several pipeline projects in West Asia, including some in Iraq. Not surprisingly, the company is investing Rs 140 crore in a greenfield facility at Anjar in Gujarat. "The dismantling of the administered price mechanism (on petroleum products), gas discovery, the latent gas demand, and the emphasis on the import of Liquified Natural Gas (which will have to be piped from landing points) is leading to a growing demand for gas transportation," says R.C. Mansukhani, Chairman, Man Industries, who expects orders for 5,000-6,000 kilometres of pipeline in the next five years. That's a bit.

-Dipayan Baishya

H.K. Mittal/CMD/Mercator: He's now looking beyond India

MERCATOR LINES
Crude Transportation

In India's shipping industry you can't pick a strategy more conservative than Mercator Lines'. The company acquires second-hand carriers at rock-bottom prices and charters them to the Mumbai port and to other Indian and foreign companies. However, its recent growth-its net profit for the three months ending December 31, 2003, were 700 per cent higher than the corresponding figure for 2002-can be traced to the government's decision in 2001, to allow private shipping companies to transport crude. Between April and November 2003, Mercator acquired four second-hand mid-sized (around 90,000 tonnes) tankers for $31 million. The immediate provocation: contracts from MRPL and IOC aggregating Rs 160 crore. Chairman H.K. Mittal is now eyeing overseas opportunities and says the company may even acquire a VLCC (very large crude carrier). "There is significant under-supply in our industry," he says. "And shipping markets like China present new opportunities." Evidently, Mercator has the wind in its sails.

-Dipayan Baishya

Ratul Puri/ED/Moser Baer: The fruits of strategy

MOSER BAER INDIA
Optical Illusion

Moser Baer, one the world's five optical media manufacturers of note-the other four are in Taiwan or Japan-owes its growth to the insatiable demand for recordable CDs and DVDs. However, it would be a mistake to attribute the company's good fortune to happenstance: Moser Baer is where it is (a 18 per cent share of the global market) because of two strategic decisions. The first concerns its entry into the hi-tech and capital-intensive business. To date, the company has invested $500 million in its manufacturing facility at Noida, a Delhi satellite. The second is its focus on being in the outsourced manufacturing business as opposed to the contract manufacturing one (margins are lower here). Obviously, both have paid off.

-Kushan Mitra

Kishore Biyani/Managing Director/Pantaloon Retail : He's the Big B of retail in India

PANTALOON RETAIL (INDIA)
Shopkeeper #1

Anyone who has set foot in any of the eight big bazaars across seven Indian cities-three of these opened for business in 2003-has already experienced, up close and personal, the reason behind Pantaloon Retail's growth. In the first six months of 2003-04, Pantaloon grew its revenues by 45 per cent; net profit by 91 per cent. And the company's Chief Executive Kishore Biyani promises that there will be no let up. "Last year was the year of growth in our value-business," says Biyani. "This year we will be concentrating on the life-style business." On the ground, that translates into Central, a mall where Biyani hopes to lease out retail space. The first of these, all 125,000 square feet of it, will open doors for business in March 2004. This one is obviously a Big C.

-Dipayan Baishya

Raghavendra Rao/Managing Director/Orchid: Discovery-to-delivery aspirations

ORCHID CHEMICALS & PHARMACEUTICALS
The Price of Regulation

Chennai-based Orchid-its revenues for the first nine months of 2003-04 increased by 46 per cent and net profit, by 144 per cent, over the same period in 2002-03-began the new year well. It's year-old acquisition of Mano Pharma kicked in (the company's financials will now be integrated into Orchid's) doubling the size of its lucrative formulations business from Rs 60 crore last year to Rs 120 crore. In 2003, the prime driver of Orchid's growth, says the company's Managing Director K. Raghavendra Rao, was the shift from sales in unregulated markets to regulated ones. Mumbai-brokerage SSKI estimates that increased sales in regulated markets will result in a CAGR of 28 per cent between 2003 and 2007; the corresponding estimate for net profit is 88 per cent. That's some growth.

-Nitya Varadarajan

Arun Jain/CEO/Polaris: Betting on a hybrid product-service strategy

POLARIS SOFTWARE LABS
After The Flood

There's a feeling in most quarters that Polaris, a Chennai-based software major that was once spoken of in the same breath as Infosys, TCS, Wipro, Satyam, and HCL Technologies has never really got its due-from its peers, the media, and investors. The arrest and detainment of its CEO Arun Jain in Indonesia over a customer relationship that soured and teething troubles associated with its merger with Orbitech haven't helped matters. However, most analysts who track the it services sector believe the worst is behind Polaris. Like Temenos and i-flex, Polaris has a banking product Orbione. But unlike these companies, its strategy has more of the services component. "Packaging the product with service offerings will help us grow from a mere utility business to an enhancement one," said Jain at a conference announcing the company's results for the quarter ended December 31, 2003. The numbers? A 75 per cent growth in revenues and a 48 per cent growth in profits in the first nine months. That's impressive.

-Nitya Varadarajan

Prithvi Jindal/Chairman/Saw Pipes: Iraq is the honey-pot

SAW PIPES
Pipes For Everyone

Prithvi Jindal knows that pipes are not what one would term a 'sexy' industry, but sitting in his office in New Delhi's Bhikaji Cama Place, he is not complaining: Saw Pipes Limited has been growing at a frenetic pace. Revenues have grown from Rs 313.4 crore in 1999-00 to Rs 807 crore in 2002-03. And with the oil and gas sector picking up speed, with forecasts of both larger energy (oil and natural gas) resources being discovered and increased consumption, things are looking rather good. "You know something, if I had Rs 1,000 crore to invest today, I would invest it in the pipeline business, not making the pipes but operating the pipelines; it is extremely profitable," says Jindal. The man would like nothing better than to see Saw Pipes become a "total pipe solutions" company. "People will always need pipes," he says. "We will be there."

-Kushan Mitra

Surinder Kapur/Chairman/Sona Koyo: Volumes, he has; now he's making a value-play

SONA KOYO STEERING SYSTEMS
Northbound

Lately he has been making all the tabloids after his son, Sunjay married Bollywood heroine Karishma Kapoor. But, Surinder Kapur runs one of India's largest automotive component manufacturers, Sona Koyo Steering Systems Limited, and with the automotive market set to touch a million passenger vehicles this year, things are looking good. Sitting in his eighth floor office in Gurgaon overlooking the factory of his largest client, Maruti Udyog Limited, Kapur has his task cut out. He knows that to reach the set target of Rs 450 crore in revenues by 2007, Sona must export (it will, starting August 2004), restructure its costs, and enter the high-value power-steering and electronic power steering businesses. Still, as long as Indians keep buying cars (and watching his daughter-in-law's movies), Kapur is sure to be happy.

-Kushan Mitra

STERLING BIOTECH
Encapsulating Growth

Sterling Biotech is the largest gelatin maker in India and all Asia. That isn't saying much: the Indian market for gelatin is limited and the company fights with global biggies Sobel and PB Gelatin for share (Gelatin is used by the pharmaceutical industry to make hard and soft capsules and in other medical applications). Rather than merely focus on this market, Sterling has aggressively sought international certification and built relationships with global healthcare biggies such as Cardinal Health Inc. and Kenko Corporation. Today, almost half its revenues come from exports. Given its natural cost advantage, Sterling's net profits have been on the ascendant. In the second quarter of 2003-04, for instance, they increased by 186 per cent over the corresponding period in 2002-03. Expectedly, a Rs 236-crore investment in capacity expansion is in the offing.

-Roshni Jayakar

Ratan Tata/Chairman/Tata Motors: Globalisation is it

TATA MOTORS
Stepping On The Gas

In the April-December 2003 period, sales of Tata Motors' commercial vehicles surged by 44.5 per cent. The truck maker isn't just growing faster than the industry; more notably, it's recording such growth rates on volumes of 100,000 and above. Between April and December, Tata Motors sold 104,675 CVs. And for good measure 97,219 cars, which marks a 42 per cent growth over 2002's corresponding nine-months. "This growth is a result of bringing a slew of new products into the market. Over the past 18 months, we must have brought 15 products (including variants) to market," points out Praveen Kadle, Executive Director (Finance), Tata Motors. Backing the new launches was a revamp of the marketing and distribution network, a broadening of the export base, and new global alliances such as the one with Rover of the UK. That the new products are kicking in is evident from the increasing marketshare figures across most segments: Tata Motors' share in trucks, for instance, which had fallen to 66 per cent a couple of years ago, is now up to 70 per cent.

-Brian Carvalho

Niru Mehta/Vice Chairman/Tata Telecom: Tapping the BPO boom

TATA TELECOM
Calling India

To morph from a retailer of small exchanges (PBXs) to a successful provider of call-centre solutions could not have been easy. Tata Telecom-a joint venture of the Tata Group and Lucent spin-off Avaya-saw and seized the opportunity for marketing such solutions ahead of the competition. Today, the company boasts a 50 per cent share of the contact-centre market. Tata Telecom also offers video-conferencing, virtual private networks and Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) solutions for other corporates. "We have all the basics right and are limited only by our own imagination and ability to draw on the organisational and individual competencies that we possess," says Niru Mehta, Vice Chairman, Tata Telecom and the MD and Vice President of Avaya India. Next step: exports and acquisitions.

Vandana Gombar