Fortune 500 India: The $2-trillion Club

THE INDIAN corporate sector is in the midst of rapid transformation — a fact acknowledged not just in India but also increasingly across the world. Nowhere is this metamorphosis more evident than in the Fortune 500 India list, the definitive compendium of corporate performance. This year, the Fortune 500 India cohort has hit peak revenues and peak profits, a sign that this up-move could well be a constant. The reasons are not far to seek: As V. Keshavdev, who helmed the Fortune 500 India project, writes in his opening essay, the period between 2020 and 2025 forced a churn within India Inc., which led to a clean-up of balance sheets, inefficient capacity shutting down, and technology becoming core to businesses. The Reserve Bank of India, too, notes this in its October bulletin. Explaining how the corporate sector, post-pandemic, has emerged as one of the important economic growth drivers, RBI points to its resilience during- and after Covid. Explaining how corporates remained resilient during the pandemic, RBI says: “[The] corporate sector rebounded strongly thereafter, supported by fiscal and monetary policies, pandemic-led pent-up demand, and effective cost management… Balance sheet analysis indicates that corporates continued to deleverage their balance sheet, which will help to undertake fresh investment activities.” This year’s Fortune 500 India list is special for one big reason. While every year since 2021 the 500 have been hitting new highs, this year, at a cumulative revenue figure of ₹172 lakh crore, the Fortune 500 India has broken into the $2-trillion league for the first time ever. This, even though the rupee has consistently lost ground to the dollar over the past 15 years. The Top 3, typically, does not have much drama, with Reliance Industries, Life Insurance Corp. and Indian Oil Corp. holding on to their positions. However, this year, banking behemoth State Bank of India — whose chairman C.S. Setty is preparing the organisation to be a tech-first institution — has gained one rank and moved into the No.4 spot, displacing Oil and Natural Gas Corp., which slips to fifth place. Engineering giant Larsen & Toubro, whose chairman & managing director S.N. Subrahmanyan is putting together a game plan to enhance the contribution of the services businesses in a major way, gains two spots to break into the Top 10. Tata Consultancy Services, on the other hand, slips two places and drops out of the Top 10 to No.11. These movements notwithstanding, the broader story of the Fortune 500 India is this — the corporate sector is in fine fettle, with leaner balance sheets, an increasing tech edge, and ready to take on new challenges in a rapidly changing global business environment. And this is also because of the solid core — the 212 companies that have figured in every single edition of the Fortune 500 India since the list was launched in 2010. This is what we are calling the “gravitational centre” of corporate India, the bulwarks of growth which this year contributed a staggering ₹123 lakh crore of the ₹172 lakh crore cumulative total income of the entire 500. Not surprisingly, Union Minister of Commerce & Industry Piyush Goyal, who was the Chief Guest at Fortune India’s Best CEOs 2025 event in November, is bullish on India Inc. “Anything and everything we do — goods, services, every action of ours should be of a high quality,” he told a room full of the country’s topmost corporate leaders. Sage advice from one of India’s sharpest policymakers.

Fortune 500 India: The $2-trillion Club

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