INFY, WIPRO, ICICI BANK AMONG FORBES ‘ FAB 50
ICICI Bank and software giants Infosys Technologies and Wipro are three Indian companies that figure in the list of 50 fabulous Asian firms compiled by Forbes magazine.
Companies with at least $5 billion in revenue or
market value have been considered for the list and some 500 made the grade and met the magazine’s definition of Big. Out of them, 50 were chosen on the basis of the best aggregate score for long term profitability ,
sales and earnings growth as well as projected earning s and stock price gains.
Infosys Technologies ,according to Forbes ,has a market value of $14.7 billion and its sales have been put at $1.6 billion The corresponding figures for Wipro are $11.7 billion and $1.9 billion .ICICI Bank, with a market value of $8.1 billion, has sales worth $3.9 billion. But none of the three firms have found a place among the top 10.
Among the top five are two Chinese companies and one each from Japan, Australia and South Korea. Japan’s Toyota Motors, with a market value of $146.2 billion and sales worth $173.1 billion., tops the list .While China’s petroleum giant Petro China is second, it is followed by Australian materials outfit BHP-Billion, Hong Kong-based telecommunications
company China Mobile and Samsung Electronics from South Korea.
One may be surprised to note that about a decade back ICICI was resticted in its role by Govt. of India to provide financial assistance to large industries under license permit rule of then Indian Govt. No retail banking at all. Likewise Infosys was a company started by Mr. Narayan Murthy, out of sheer necessity when he could not see eye to eye with his then employers Patny Computers. This was a time when most people in India has just heard the word - computer and were not aware of what is a Main frame. The company was started with 3 of his colleagues as a very small set up. WIPRO's parent company was in edible oil business and it was Aziz Premji's entrepreneurship which has come to the fore at a time when the Indian banks were not considering Computer enterprise as a business for providing loans.
See the turnaround and figures which is a result of sheer human enterprise.