Five Indian companies — Larsen & Toubro, Hindustan Unilever, Infosys, Tata Consultancy and Sun Pharma — have made it to the list of 100 most innovative firms in the world, prepared by US business magazine Forbes .
Engineering giant L&T is ranked among the top ten companies, ahead of Google and Starbucks. L&T is ranked ninth in the list. US-based Salesforce.com tops the rankings.
Fast moving consumer goods company Hindustan Unilever is positioned 12th, while global technology services firm Infosys holds the 19th slot. TCS is placed at the 29th position.
Specialty pharma company Sun Pharmaceutical Industries is ranked at the 38th position.
Forbes termed Infosys’ co-founder and CEO, S. D. Shibulal, as both “observer and experimenter”. In 30 years at Infosys, “there is nothing that I have not done,” the magazine quoted Shibulal as saying.
Forbes used the “Innovation Premium” which is calculated first by projecting a company’s income from existing businesses, plus anticipated growth from those businesses, and look at the net present value of those cash flows.
To be considered in the list, at least seven years of financial data for a given firm are needed. Besides, firms with market value greater than $10 billion and those which make some investment in R&D were considered, Forbes said.