India’s 500 most valuable companies worth more than country's GDP: Report

“We salute the leadership of these companies who have ably steered their businesses through the ravages of the pandemic, adopting new ways of serving their customers and emerging as winners,” said Amitabh Chaudhry, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Axis Bank.

“The total value of the 2021 Burgundy Private Hurun India 500 companies is close to INR 228 lakh crore (US$3 trillion), which is higher than India’s GDP for FY21. The top line of these 500 companies is equivalent to 29 percent of India’s GDP and they employ up to 1.5 percent of the total workforce of the country.”

With a minimum value of Rs 5,600 crore (roughly $750 million), companies on the list on average grew by 68 percent YOY to stand at an average value of Rs 45,300 crore. The total sales from the companies on the 2021 Burgundy Private Hurun India 500 stood at Rs 58 lakh crore, or 26 percent of India’s GDP. The companies’ total tax contributions also come to be 1.9 lakh crore, nearly 62 percent of India’s corporate tax collections in FY21.

The three biggest companies in the country are Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), valued at Rs 16.7 lakh crore, Tata Consultancy Services (Rs 13.1 lakh crore) and HDFC Bank (Rs 9.1 lakh crore). Of the 500 companies, 461 companies saw their value increase while nearly 200 companies doubled in value. Twenty companies saw their value increase by over Rs 1 lakh crore, with Reliance Industries, Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, and ICICI Bank seeing the biggest growth over the past year.

The companies also show a wide range when it comes to their age, with 52 companies on the list being younger than 10 years and 21 companies being older than 100 years. Mensa Brands was the youngest company on the  2021 Burgundy Private Hurun India 500 list and Forbes & Company is the oldest company, being six months and nearly 255 years old, respectively.