India’s largest companies by turnover for Financial Year ending March 2009
(Amount in Rs crore)

Top 6
Indian Oil   – Rs 290,946 crore  – Oil and Gas
Reliance Industries  – Rs 153,128 crore  – Oil and Gas
Tata Steel   – Rs 147,595 crore  – Steel
BPCL   – Rs 137,993 crore  – Oil and Gas
HPCL   – Rs 129,979 crore  – Oil and Gas
State Bank of India   – Rs 113093 crore  – Banking

Others of interest
11 NTPC – Rs 47,647 crore  – Power generation
13 Larsen & Toubro – Rs 41,055 crore  – Capital goods
Tata Consultancy Services – Rs 27,386 crore  – Infotech
Infosys – Rs 22,166 crore  – Infotech
Bharti Airtel – Rs 37,504 crore  – Telecom
Hindustan Unilever – Rs 16,848 crore  – FMCG

Approximate figures (from Outlook issue referenced in an earlier post)
Bennett Coleman & Company (Times of India group) – nearly Rs 5000 crore
Dainik Bhaskar Group (Publisher of Dainik Bhaskar, the largest circulated daily and DNA) – Rs 1400 crore

Having worked in Larsen & Toubro  as a project engineer for 5+ years (mainly for the experience as I do not want to do a job ever again in my life) and with many of these big companies as customers while working as a project engineer, some general observations:

  • Have very good systems in place
  • Except the software and banking companies, they do not have too many employees, but have investments of thousands of crores in machinery and infrastructure
  • Difficult to displace these companies in terms of turnover due to the investment made.

For employees,
Plus points
you work with experienced people and learn from them, so you make fewer mistakes
Very professional work environment, with little blatant discrimination on the basis of gender
Handle high value projects valued in crores, monitor profits closely, manage risk
You get very good exposure to people from different social and economic backgrounds, treat them fairly, do not discriminate because they are not your “friends”
Secure job, all payments, including dues made on time
Learn to deal with customers and vendors , both good and bad.
Decisions are made on the basis of facts and numbers, not gossip and false rumors.
Transparency – you could ask customers and vendors anything and get an answer and vice versa.

Negatives
salary is average
growth is slow (one promotion every three years)
little flexibility