ASIAN PAINTS /ASHWIN DANI/VICE CHAIRMAN
A Global Brushstroke

Brand success: In many ways, Asian as a consumer goods company

When a company has manufacturing facilities in 13 countries and a presence in 24, it can claim to be truly global. Courtesy, the recent acquisitions of Berger International, Singapore, and SCIB Chemical, Egypt, Asian Paints has just that. None of this is a chance occurrence. In the early 1990s, Asian Paints decided that the logical next-step for it was to go global; since then, it has worked towards that goal.

ASIAN PAINTS Ashwin Dani

On the strength of its unique-for-a-paints-company advertising, Asian Paints has built one of India's strongest consumer brands despite not being either a fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) or consumer durables company. And it has amongst the most wired supply chains in India Inc, something that translates into a definite advantage in terms of distribution and cost control.

Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Ashwin Dani, believes this is responsible for the consistent improvement in the company's operating margins, up to 17.68 per cent today from 14.81 per cent five years ago. With more investments in it lined up, Asian Paints is making sure it doesn't lose the advantage.

BRITANNIA INDUSTRIES/SUNIL ALAGH/MANAGING DIRECTOR
Twice-baked, Twice-born

BRITANNIA INDUSTRIES Sunil Alagh

Fine, the company has recently been in the news (this magazine, even) for all the wrong reasons, but Britannia remains one of India's most enduring food brands. The gloom in the FMCG domain has left biscuits largely untouched and the company, with a 60 per cent share of the market, and a strong presence in the lower-end, looks set to achieve its target of making every third Indian a Britannia consumer. The company's decision to divest its growing dairy business to a joint venture with New Zealand's Fonterra Co-operative Group may slow its growth rate some but, as another school of thought goes, it could help the management focus exclusively on biscuits. It's all they've got, but it should do.

CADBURY INDIA/BHARAT PURI/MD
A Private Affair

CADBURY INDIA Bharat Puri

The company that made it alright for adults to crave chocolates-it also remade its fortunes in the process-will certainly not be part of the sample for the next edition of India's Best Managed Company: following a buyback by its parent, the UK-based Cadbury Schweppes, the company was delisted from the bourses in 2002. Like Britannia, Cadbury has an objective defined in terms of consumers, "a Cadbury in every pocket." And like FMCG behemoth Hindustan Lever Limited-it made it through the numerical filters of the survey but chose to take the fifth- Cadbury has a power-brand strategy. With an aggressive foray into the low-end with Chocki, a squeeze-out chocolate GOO aimed at children, and launches at the high-end of the market, Cadbury seems on its way. The fact that chocolates remained immune to the slowdown in the overall fmcg market helped, not that the company needed it.

DR REDDY'S LABORATORIES/DR ANJI REDDY/CHAIRMAN
The Innovator's Dilemma

DR. REDDY'S LABORATORIES Anji Reddy

Dr Reddy's wants to be a discovery-driven global pharma company. That's a stretch target that could take time and money. To fund the discovery business, the company is focussing on the lucrative generics market in the US; with several blockbuster drugs going off patent by 2005, this market could be, by some estimates, as large as $10 billion (Rs 47,000 crore). The balance between the promise of exponential growth (thanks to new discoveries) and a steady cash flow (arising from generics) is what makes the company unique. More in our feature on Page 92.

Gurgaon: India's urban renewal over the past decade may have benefited Gujarat Ambuja, but the company has left nothing to chance

GUJARAT AMBUJA CEMENTS/NAROTTAM SEKHSARIA/MANAGING DIRECTOR
Yes, Cement's Sexy

GUJARAT AMBUJA CEMENTS Narottam Sekhsaria

It's easy to say this: Gujarat Ambuja is the best cement company in India, period. It's tough being a successful cement company in India: retail prices are largely outside the control of individual companies. Still, GACI has grown by focussing on volumes and cost control. It has also made a strategic investment in cement major acc and as Anil Singhvi, Executive Director of the company, says, "Competitors can work together and Gujarat Ambuja and acc demonstrate that." The cyclical nature of cement prices remains a matter of concern but the housing boom and the government's emphasis on infrastructure are certain to result in an increase in demand. That could result in improved profitability for all cement companies in the country. As it often happens in such cases, the company that is the least-cost manufacturer, and the most efficient in terms of logistics- and distribution-management stands to gain the most. Gujarat Ambuja is that company.

HINDALCO INDUSTRIES K.M. Birla

HINDALCO INDUSTRIES/KUMAR MANGALAM BIRLA/CHAIRMAN
Aluminium Standard

Purely on the strength of its strategy, Hindalco deserves to be in this choice set. Not too long ago, the Aditya Birla Group company was just another aluminium producer. Today, in the wake of the acquisition of Indal, it is India's largest. "Once the government firms up its plans for Nalco, we will bid for that too," says full-time director A.K. Agarwala. The company has also sought to hedge its vulnerability to global aluminium prices by diversifying into copper-the cycles of the two businesses are diagonally different-by acquiring the copper business of stablemate Indo Gulf. To insulate itself better, Hindalco has launched semi-fabricated and value-added aluminium products, acquired copper mines in Australia, and initiated efforts to reduce its cost by around $50 (Rs 2,400) a ton. "The cost-cutting drive (initiated at the end of FY 02), will give results after 18-24 months," says Anant Katare, an analyst at Khandwala Securities. Acquisitions, capacity expansions, diversifications, and a strategic move up the value chain, surely, there's little else a company can do?

HDFC BANK Aditya Puri

HDFC BANK/ADITYA PURI/MANAGING DIRECTOR
Systemic Success

Among the first new private banks in India, HDFC bank is a study in systemic efficiency. Its technology (fairly advanced stuff, if you must know) is scalable, and its costs, among the lowest in the business. Constrained by its parent's focus on mortgages from entering the business, HDFC Bank has augmented its banking operations by cross-selling products such as depository and bill-payment services, mutual funds, and investment advice. And it boasts among the best risk management systems in the industry. For instance, on March 31, 2002, its portfolio of funded exposure (including advances and corporate debt) was highly diversified with each of 28 industries accounting for 1 per cent or more. That could explain why its non-performing assets, as a proportion of total assets is well below 1 per cent. Read all about HDFC Bank on Page 96.

Retail Play: Even as its disinvestment continues to be debated, HPCL has increased its retail-focus

HPCL/M.B. LAL/CHAIRMAN AND MD
The most efficient of them all

HPCL M.B. Lal

Even as the blow-hot-blow-cold disinvestment saga of Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) continues, the company continues to remain the most efficient public sector oil company. To deal with the coming competition in petro-marketing, HPCL has acquired some of its dealer-owned outlets and done them up, convenience stores, ATMs, the works and more. "We are entering allied businesses," says M.B. Lal, Chairman and Managing Director, HPCL. "One is an alliance with car rental agency Hertz."

Apart from the emphasis on retail, the company is focussing on reducing cost and increasing efficiency, the two universal mantras of well-managed companies anywhere in the world. Its presence in this list is reflection enough of its ability to do that.

Aggressive Universal Bank: And yesterday, it was a development finance institution

ICICI BANK/K.V. KAMATH/CEO
It's a universal bank!

ICICI BANK K.V. Kamath

Yesterday's development finance institution is today the country's second largest bank and its first universal bank. It boasts the largest ATM network in the country, is the #1 car finance company and the #2 mortgages one and its subsidiaries in the asset management and insurance business are the #1 private sector players in both. Much of this stems from its aggressive retail play even when ICICI and ICICI Bank were disparate entities-the aggressiveness was a ploy to reduce the risk of ICICI's traditional portfolio. The NPAs inherited from ICICI remain an area of concern but the merged entity's diversified asset base and its rapidly expanding retail base has reduced this risk. And the new Securitisation Bill could help it recover old loans smoothly.

Media-and investor-darling: Forget its consistent performance, Infosys has a squeaky clean image, rare in India Inc.

INFOSYS/NANDAN NILEKANI/CEO
Transparency Troubadour

INFOSYS Nandan Nilekani

Can any listing of India's best managed ever be complete without Infosys? The company has won innumerable awards (including being named BT-Hewitt Best Employer in India twice), maintained its position in the 10 most valuable companies by market capitalisation (this, despite the recent meltdown), and is renowned for its transparency and good management practices. We could go on and on and say a lot more but suggest you turn to Page 106 instead.

MOSER BAER/DEEPAK PURI/CEO
They do it with Optics

MOSER BAER Deepak Puri

The logical next step for floppy disk manufacturers was to have diversified into optical media such as compact discs (CDs) and digital video discs (DVDs). Few Indian companies made it in floppies, and only one has managed the transition.

Actually, that sentence is a trifle unfair to Moser Baer, for the company hasn't just made the shift but is, today, a player of note in the global market for optical media-it has a marketshare of around 11 per cent. It has achieved this position on the strength of its global-scale facilities and efficient operations.

Moser Baer's recent decision to up DVD capacities will help it cut costs further. Already, its products are among the least-priced on offer, one reason why it is a regular target for investigations on the charge of dumping. The European Union recently cleared the company of dumping charges but has imposed a countervailing duty of 7.3 per cent on its products. Even this won't hurt Moser Baer and its products will remain around 10 per cent cheaper than the competition's. Bravo! (turn to Page 102).

RELIANCE INDUSTRIES Mukesh & Anil Ambani

RELIANCE INDUSTRIES/MUKESH AMBANI/CHAIRMAN
Managing Complexity

Reliance is the largest private sector company in India and the only Indian private sector company to figure in Fortune magazine's list of the world's 500 largest companies, but size isn't the reason the company is here. Nor is it the company's performance in terms of topline and market value growth, the axis of the value creation matrix that formed the basis of the BT-A.T. Kearney study-although, it must be mentioned that Reliance's performance so skewed the matrix that almost all other companies in the process industry suffered by comparison.

Ambitious Diversification: Since 1996, RIL has become a refining and telecommunications major

The reason for Reliance's presence among India's Best Managed Company is attributable, more than anything else, to the company's ability to effectively manage large-scale projects-yes, we all know the first launch of Reliance Infocomm didn't go too well but everyone would have been surprised if it did-in fairly diverse areas.

Today, the company is a big player in refining, petrochemicals and telecommunications; its exploration business has had some big wins, like the 10.45 trillion cubic metres (reserves) of gas it struck in the Krishna-Godavari basin; it is poised to enter petro-products retailing; and Reliance Lifesciences is among the few companies in the world actively engaged in stem cell research. Being big and successful over a period of time is not as simple as it looks on paper but Reliance Industries has managed just that. For details on how exactly it achieved this, turn to Page 44.

SATYAM COMPUTER Ramalinga Raju

SATYAM COMPUTER/RAMALINGA RAJU/CHAIRMAN
The Third Company

The appreciating rupee and falling margins are a cause of concern for Satyam computer as they are for other Indian it services companies. Still, Satyam is doing everything in its powers to ensure that its growth -it was the fastest growing company in its genre in India till recently-isn't hit. The company is expanding into new regions, Europe and West and South Asia (it is already present in 43 countries); is already the largest sap specialist in India (this business alone has 50 global customers); has recently diversified into the go-go BPO space through a new venture, Nipuna services; and is considering exiting altogether from its just-turned-profitable internet access business, Sify (it has gradually reduced its stake in this business). It'll be tough for the company-operating profit declined by 19 per cent in 2002-03; net profit by 32 per cent-but that's a problem the entire software services industry in India has to live with.

Comeback bike: The completely locally-developed Victor helped the company ride back to wellness

TVS MOTOR/VENU SRINIVASAN/CHAIRMAN
Solo Victor

TVS MOTORS Venu Srinivasan

Normally, when Indian companies break up with their joint venture partners they go through a regulation period of suffering. Not TVS. Since breaking up with Suzuki, it has launched its indigenously developed four-stroke motorcycle Victor and has increased its sales by close to 3 lakh units between 2001-02 and 2002-03. "We are developing new products for the domestic and international market. We have spent around Rs 80 crore on development during the year 2002-03. It will be higher this year," says C.P. Raman, President, TVS Motor. Add to that, its superior manufacturing systems-it is the only auto company and the third Indian company to win the Deming Medal for quality-and it is easy to see why TVS Motor is a shoo-in for a listing of this nature.

Tapping the domestic market: Sun's marketing focus has helped it grow its share

SUN PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRIES/DILIP S. SHANGHVI/CHAIRMAN AND MD
Home-grown success

SUN PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRIES Dilip S. Shanghvi

Sun pharmaceutical has become one of India's fastest growing pharma companies on the strength of its focus on new drug delivery systems and its emphasis on marketing. Six of its brands are among the most prescribed in the country, and the company has consistently grown its marketshare. Like its peers, Sun has a presence in the US market, but through a subsidiary, Carraco, in which it holds just under a 50 per cent stake. Sun supplies speciality bulk drugs to Carraco, which has already received approvals for six ANDAs (Abbreviated New Drug Applications)-the company will file six more ANDAs before the year is out. "We are stepping up our research efforts. In two year's, our R&D spend will go up to 6 per cent. And we have started filing applications from India as well," says Dilip Shanghvi, Sun's Chairman and MD. Now you know.

WIPRO/AZIM PREMJI/CHAIRMAN
Software Raider

WIPRO Azim Premji

In the mid-1990s Wipro was, let's face it, a seemingly confused company with low margins. Its profitability may have taken a hit in the last quarter but today, the company presents a different picture. The company's recently eroded margins are still healthy; it boasts a positive economic value added (EVA); it has built managerial bandwidth; and it has put the cash on its balance sheet to good effect, making a slew of strategic acquisitions. The Spectramind deal that facilitated the company's entry into the booming business process outsourcing (BPO) market was initially panned by analysts; now, there's a growing realisation that Wipro didn't come off too badly from the acquisition. And the company probably boasts the best business processes in the industry.

Purely in terms of the distance it has had to cover, Wipro has done more than any other company in its industry in India. The company has had its failures-such as its internet service provider business-and it still retains a niche presence in soaps, toiletries and lighting but these businesses are profitable and do not really take away anything from its mainstay software business. And the hardware arm has actually helped the company position itself as a system integrator of some note.

As for the pressure on profitability, most analysts expect the company to come through largely unscathed. "Wipro will be able to withstand the current slowdown with ease," says Gurunath Mudlapur of Khandwala Securities. For more, turn to Page 106.