10 Most Profitable Companies in India

The 10 most profitable companies in India are not as profitable as their global counterparts, but with a home market of over a billion people, their growth prospects are certainly bright.

India has one of the largest and fastest-growing economies in the world. The rapidly developing nation has the potential to become the third-largest economy in the world within the next ten years, due to its young population, increasing participation in global trade, and healthy savings and investment rates. In addition, the combined net income of the 10 companies on this list stands at $8.68 billion, no doubt adding significantly to India’s economic growth. The top 10 companies in India in terms of profit span multiple industries, including fast moving consumer goods, energy, oil, automobiles, banking, finance, and more. This even distribution of classifications for the top performing companies in India bodes well for the country’s prospects, as this shows multiple fronts for significant income, especially compared with countries such as China and the U.S, in which the majority of the most profitable companies are financial institutions.

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India is constantly being compared with China, as the two countries each have more than a billion people (the two countries are home to about 30% of the world’s population), have each registered robust economic growth over the past decade, and are classified as newly industrialized countries. However, the two countries play by different rules. While both countries have large state-owned enterprises, communist China is more hands-on with its economic interventions, while India, deemed as the world’s largest democracy, is more inclined to let natural market forces do the work. Couple laissez faire policies with mounting red tape and you get a less favorable business situation in India. China has about 32 companies that pull in net income of at least $1 billion, compared to only three for India. Nevertheless, as India’s favorable business conditions position it for better growth, the billion-dollar club of Indian companies should only grow.

As for which of these corporations — Coal India Ltd (NSE:COALINDIA), Dabur India Ltd (NSE:DABUR), GAIL (India) Limited (NSE:GAIL), Indiabulls Housing Finance Ltd (NSE:IBULHSGFIN), Indian Oil Corporation Limited (NSE:IOC), Maruti Suzuki India Ltd (NSE:MARUTI), Oil India Limited (NSE:OIL), Power Grid Corporation of India Limited (NSE:POWERGRID), State Bank of India (NSE:SBIN), and Union Bank of India (NSE:UNIONBANK) — ended up as the most profitable, we rank the companies on this list of the 10 most profitable companies in India in order of their net income for their 2016 fiscal years.

For further profit-related reading, check out the 10 Most Profitable Companies In Europe.