Corporate India was not a very popular theme when we decided to compile a book on the top 500 private sector companies in India. Rita (my wife) and I were at Syracuse University, NY when I thought of writing a book on Fortune 500 companies. The year was 1984 and since we were missing our family, and India, we decided to return back home and write a book on Corporate India 500 instead. There was hardly any starting point. The only list of top private sector companies in India was published by The Economic Times. The person responsible for that list was Kiron Kasbekar, former Editor of The Economic Times. We met Kasbekar and got from him the list of the top 100 companies published annually by The Economic Times.
Indian Corporate Sector was not in good books of the Nehru-Gandhi family. The country was governed by a group of socialists led first by Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru and later by his daughter, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Private sector led by the Tatas and the Birlas was an anathema to both. From 1947 till 1977, when Indira Gandhi was defeated by the Janata Party, Indian Corporate Sector was dormant. Janata Party led by Prime Minister Morarji Desai and his Finance Minister H. M. Patel were both pro-business and started encouraging the Private Sector. There were probably 100 business families in India who dominated the entire corporate sector.
Our aim was to find and put together 500 corporate companies, in the private sector, that had a sales of at least 10 crores or more. In 1984, that was a tall order. There were atleast 250 Public Sector Companies that dominated the industry. Besides the public sector there were a lot of Multi-Nationals, who controlled the consumer market. Most of the Indian Private Sector Companies were confined to areas like Textiles, Cement, Jute, Tea Gardens, Cables, Engineering, Power and Tyres. There were other big companies that were privately held and refused to release any information. We had no choice but to select only the companies listed on Stock Exchange . We wrote to all of them, some 250 companies responded and the rest of the information, we extracted from their Annual Reports. Since we wanted to incorporate their Corporate Identity, it was a nightmare. It took us 30 months to put the book together.
The book, “Corporate India 500”, a visual survey, was compiled by Pavan Gupta, V. K. Jagannathan and Rita Gupta. It was published by R.V. Pandit (publisher, Imprint) on March 20, 1987. It was a publication of Business Press Pvt. Ltd. The book was priced at Rs. 300. The print order was 3,000 copies, 300 of that was sent to the United States under PL480. In India it did not do well, probably because India Inc. was not in fashion then. It has been 21 years since we put that book together. We are seriously contemplating writing another book on the Indian Entrepreneurs of the 21st century.
Filed under: Corporate India, Indian Media | Tagged: 21st Century, Annual Reports, Birlas, Business Press Pvt. Ltd, Cables, Cement, Corporate Identity, Corporate India 500, Editor, Engineering, Finance Minister, Fortune 500, H. M. Patel, Imprint, India, Indian Corporate Sector, Indian Entrepreneurs, Indian Private Sector Companies, Indira Gandhi, Janata Party, Jute, Kiron Kasbekar, March 20th 1987, Morarji Desai, Multi-Nationals, Nehru-Gandhi, NY, Pavan Gupta, PL480, Power, Prime Minister, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Private Sector, Private Sector Companies, Privately Held, Public Sector Companies, Publication, Published, Publisher, Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru, R.V. Pandit, Rita, Rita Gupta, Socialists, Stock Exchange, Syracuse University, Tatas, Tea Gardens, Textiles, The Economic Times, Tyres, United States, V. K. Jagannathan, Visual Survey | Leave a comment »
THINK! 