Dataquest annual review of the Indian IT industry

Top 200 IT Cos in India Logged Combined Revenue US$ 84 Bn in FY ‘11

Record 25% Growth, the Highest in 4 years

Each Top 20 IT Company Rev over US$ 1 billion, Together log US$ 54 Bn

Contribute 64% to the Top 200 Cos’ combined revenue

The Top 200 IT Companies in India logged combined revenue of US$ 84 billion (Rs 384,250 crore) in FY ‘11 to grow at 25% -- the highest rate of growth in last 4 years. The revenues of these companies in FY ‘10 and FY ‘09 were Rs 307,126 crore and Rs 289,093 crore respectively.

The combined revenue of the Top 20 IT companies was US$ 54 billion (Rs 247,808 crore) in FY ‘11, also representing a growth of 25%. This is significantly higher than the 8% growth recorded in FY ‘10 with revenues of Rs 198,017 crore.

The FY ‘11 growth surpasses the 24% growth witnessed in FY ‘08, the year before the slowdown, according to the annual research findings on the Indian IT industry carried out byDataquest, the flagship journal of CyberMedia, South Asia’s largest specialty publishers.

Each of the Top 20 IT Companies was over US$ 1 billion in FY ‘11, together posting revenues of US$ 54 billion (Rs 247,808 crore) -- contributing 64% to the Top 200 companies revenue.

According to the findings the top 5 Indian IT companies in FY ’11 were TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HP and Cognizant with revenues of Rs 33,112 crore (25% growth over last year), Rs 25,997 crore (22%), Rs 24,899 crore (13%), Rs 23,227 crore (30%) and Rs 21,393 crore (37%) respectively. Wipro, which recorded the slowest growth in the Top 5, surrendered the No. 2 slot to Infosys after six years.

The No. 6 slot went to the Indian subsidiary of the 100-year old global tech behemoth IBM (Revenues Rs 14,132 crore, Year on Year growth 14%). The two companies founded by Shiv Nadar -- software major HCL Technologies and hardware led HCL Infosystems – posted revenues of Rs 14,111 crore (28%) and Rs 12,137 crore (2%), respectively to bag the No. 7 and No. 8 slot. Two product distribution companies Ingram Micro and Redington with revenues of Rs 9,766 crore (35%) and Rs 9,274 crore (32%) bagged the No. 9 and No. 10 slot.

The Dataquest annual survey, which is over 25 years old, notes that significant leadership changes have taken place at the senior levels in nearly one-third of the Top 200 IT companies.“Very rarely has a more fundamental change swept across the Indian IT industry in the past,” Dataquest editor Shyamanuja Das observed.

As many as seven of the Top 20 companies —TCS, Wipro, Cognizant, HCL Infosystems, Accenture, Microsoft and Oracle -- effected changes in top leadership while the leadership change in Infosys will come through this month.

While Mahindra Satyam has made a re-entry after two years, it hasn’t changed the ranking of top 20 companies (see table below) significantly.

However, the revenues of the Next 30 companies (Ranks 21-50) grew at 29%, faster than those of the Top 20 companies. “That means they have moved from being followers to challengers,” adds Shyamnuja. As many as 8 new companies entered the Next 30 list.

Four companies recorded triple digit growth while 150 of the 200 companies recorded double digit growth. In the FY ‘10, only one company grew over 100% while 78 recorded double digit growths. In general, companies focused on the domestic market have grown faster than those focused on exports. As many as 18 of the 20 fastest growing companies are focused on the India market.

“The faster growth of India focused IT companies shows that the high growth potential of Indian market is being tapped. Increasingly, we expect India to become a bigger player in the global IT scenario as a market, a technology creator and a hotbed of innovation—all rolled into one,” said Pradeep Gupta, publisher of CyberMedia.

The top 200 IT companies in India included 129 Indian companies and 71 foreign companies who are active players in the Indian market. Coincidentally, the top company TCS with revenue of Rs. 33,112 crore (minus BPO), was over 200 times the size of the two companies at the 200th rank -- Aftek Limited and Datamatics Global Services -- that posted revenue of Rs 155 crore each in FY ‘11.

The Dataquest research is spread over three issues of the journal where the first issue has ranked the top 200 IT companies in India, the second issue will focus on ranking BPO companies (Vol II) and the third will estimate the IT industry size and analyze various segments of the industry. While the actual industry growth would be available in third volume, the combined revenue growth of the top 200 companies is indicative of the expected broad trends in the industry.

Methodology

The DQ Top 20 takes into account revenues of IT companies from April 1, 2010 to March 31, 2011. Though different companies have different financial years, we have taken April-March revenue for each company to maintain uniformity in comparison. Only MphasiS revenue period is from May 1, 2010 to April 30, 2011.

Revenues of IT services companies do not include their BPO revenues. BPO companies—both pure-play as well as the BPO operations of multi-services firms—are covered separately in DQ Top 20 Vol II.

For those companies that are headquartered in India or for companies that had their first delivery center in India, even if they are headquartered outside India, we have taken the entire IT revenue; for companies that do business in India, we have taken the entire India IT revenue; for other non-Indian companies who export out of India, we have taken only the revenue generated by the Indian legal entity. That holds true for captive units as well.

For all conversion purposes, we have taken $1=Rs 45.62 for FY ‘11 and $1=Rs 47.58 for FY ‘10.

About CyberMedia

CyberMedia is the largest specialty media house in South Asia and amongst India's top five magazine publishers. With 15 publications, 12 websites, over 100 events and two weekly TV programs, it reaches out to a community of over 1.5 million people. Its brands have consistently been leading in their respective domains. They cover infotech (Dataquest, PCQuest,ciol.com), technology (MIT’s Technology Review), telecom (Voice&Data), biotech (BioSpectrum), entrepreneurship (Dare), outsourcing (Global Services), and consumer electronics (Living Digital, ld2.in).

Its Media Services include market research firm CyberMedia Research; and Content Matrix LLC which provides through its subsidiaries, custom publishing (TDA Group LLC) and content management services (Publication Services Inc. and CyberMedia Services).