The Hindu Business Line : Suzlon Energy in BCG list of 100 emerging giants

New Delhi, Dec. 3 Wind energy major Suzlon Energy is the latest Indian company to have broken into the Boston Consulting Group’s list of top 100 emerging giants.

Releasing the report, titled ‘2008 BCG 100 new global challengers: How top companies from rapidly developing economies are changing the world’, at the India Economic Summit here on Monday, Mr Arindam Bhattacharya, Managing Director, BCG, Delhi, and Mr Jim Hemerling, MD, in the firm’s San Francisco office, along with Mr Anand Mahindra of M&M, pointed out that companies from rapidly developing economies are globalising so quickly that they pose an urgent threat to industry leaders.

Of the 100 companies on BCG’s list 41 are from China, 20 from India and 13 from Brazil with the rest coming from 11 other rapidly developing economies. According to Mr Bhattacharya, in the current edition of the report 17 companies appear on the list for the first time. Newcomers include Grupo Bimbo of Mexico, Nine Dragons Paper Holdings and Sinomach of China, Suzlon Energy, among others. The other companies in the list range from Bajaj Auto, Bharat Forge and Mahindra and Mahindra to Infosys, Reliance group and VSNL.

Mr Hemerling pointed out that the list is heavily weighted in favour of manufacturing. Indian companies, he said, are more global than the Chinese as 47 per cent of Indian companies’ sales are from international sales whereas for the Chinese companies only 17 per cent is from global sales. Also, he said, most of these companies are more sophisticated players than being mere low-cost producers.

With over $1.2 trillion in total revenues and more than a half trillion dollars in yearly purchases, the BCG global challengers, says the report, are already formidable. And, their combined revenues will reach $3.3 trillion by 2010. Also, the challengers are already outperforming industry leaders. The report says that in the past five years, the challengers grew revenues faster than the S&P 500, earned a higher average return on sales and created far more shareholder value.