Business Line

Bharti, Pantaloon, ITC, L&T, Bharat Forge, Patni, Tata Group, Jindal, and Aptech are among the companies that Rajnish Karki discusses at length in ‘Competing with the Best’ ( http://www.penguinbooksindia.com/).

“Indian companies are slowly becoming as large as those in developed countries, especially if one takes into consideration PPP (purchasing power parity) based multiplier on rupee revenues,” he observes. Given the high entrepreneurial orientation of the people, and the fact that India has a large number of listed companies — three to ten times more than other emerging markets such as China and Russia — the demonstration effect of a few companies achieving global scales will spread fast, Karki expects.

He finds that management capability, and not capital as earlier, is now central to the growth of Indian companies, be they in knowledge-based industries such as software services, or otherwise. For instance, at the other end of the spectrum, management capability is becoming the primary and fulcrum resource in capital-intensive commodity industries too; they are moving towards a high degree of standardisation of technologies and processes, “so that the real differentiators become the speed of response to price and manufacturing discontinuities as well as the timing and risk management of capital investment decisions,” the author discovers.

Prescribed read, especially if you relish watching the corporate space.