This year onwards, the annual compendium of the BT500 list has shifted its focus from ranking the most valued companies to the most profitable ones

This year onwards, the BT500 list has shifted its focus to ranking the most profitable companies. Since 1992, the BT500 list has been ranked based on market valuation. As there are more listed companies now, Indian stock exchanges feature more than 4,000 profitable companies.

We began with a master sample of around 5,100 listed companies on the stock exchanges. About 240 companies that were not traded on at least 20% of the total 249 trading days in the July 2024-June 2025 period were excluded from the list. Thereafter, we extracted the consolidated profit after tax (PAT) of each company for FY25 and used it to rank the top 500 companies.

For a deeper perspective, we compared the latest PAT with the previous year’s figure and have also provided the one-year average market capitalisation for the July 2024-June 2025 and July 2023-June 2024 periods. We also included profitability ratios such as EBITDA margin and PAT margin in the tables, as well as the shareholding pattern of the top 500 companies, to understand the confidence of promoters and institutional investors in a particular company. For most companies, the financial year ending is March 31. The exceptions have been mentioned in the footnotes below the tables. All data has been sourced from the corporate database ACE Equity. Companies that reported their annual results post June 30, 2025, were not considered.

A few companies have also changed their names in the past year till June 30. For instance, Affle (India) is now known as Affle 3i, Sat Industries changed its name to Aeroflex Enterprises, Macrotech Developers to Lodha Developers, and Zomato to Eternal, among others. Among the top five players in terms of consolidated PAT, oil-to-telecom behemoth Reliance Industries held the pole position for the 11th straight year. The country's largest lender by assets, State Bank of India, private sector lenders HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank, and IT major Tata Consultancy Services emerged as the next big profitable companies in the country.

The country's most valued companies have been ranked based on market capitalisation by Business Today every year since 1992. Like previous years, this year's rankings are based on their average market capitalisation for the 12-month period from October 1, 2023, to September 30, 2024.

We began with a master sample of around 4,800 listed firms. We used the BSE market capitalisation for all cases, except firms that are listed only on the NSE. Some 319 companies that were not traded on at least 20% of the 248 total trading days in the October 2023-September 2024 period were excluded from the list. Thereafter, we extracted the average (daily) market capitalisation of each company over the period under consideration and used it to rank the Top 1,000 companies.

For a deeper perspective, we have also provided the average market capitalisation over the past two fiscals (FY24 and FY23), return on net worth (RONW) and return on capital employed (ROCE), in the tables. We have also ranked companies by assets, profit after tax (PAT), total income and debt.

Firms in the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sectors have not been ranked on these parameters as their method of capturing and measuring these metrics is markedly different. For most firms, the fiscal ends on March 31. The exceptions have been mentioned in the footnotes below the tables. All data has been sourced from corporate database ACE Equity, as on October 4, 2024.

A few companies have changed their names during the period of study. For instance, Century Textiles is now known as Aditya Birla Real Estate, Indiabulls Housing Finance is now Sammaan Capital, and DB Realty is now called Valor Estate, among others. The Top 3 players including oil-to-telecom behemoth Reliance Industries, IT major TCS and private sector lender HDFC Bank retained their positions on the list.

India's largest companies have been ranked based on market capitalisation by Business Today every year since 1992. This year's rankings are based on the average market capitalisation of the companies for the 12-month period from October 1, 2022 to September 30, 2023.

We began with a master sample of around 4,200 listed and actively traded companies. We have used the BSE market capitalisation for all cases, except companies that are listed only on the NSE. Some 332 companies that were not traded on at least 20 per cent of the 247 total trading days in the October 2022-September 2023 period were excluded from the list. Thereafter, we extracted the average (daily) market capitalisation of each company over the period under consideration and used it to rank the Top 1,000 companies.

For a deeper perspective, we have also provided the average market capitalisation over the past two fiscals (FY23 and FY22), return on net worth (RONW) and return on capital employed (ROCE), in the tables. We have also ranked companies by assets, profit after tax, total income and debt.

Companies in banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sectors have not been ranked on these parameters as their method of capturing and measuring these metrics is markedly different. For most companies, the financial year ends on March 31. The exceptions have been mentioned in the footnotes below the tables. All data has been sourced from the ACE Equity database as on October 3, 2023.

Meanwhile, some major mergers, demergers and acquisitions took place during the period of study. For instance, mortgage lender HDFC Ltd merged into HDFC Bank, LTI and Mindtree merged to form LTIMindtree, while Piramal Pharma demerged from Piramal Enterprises. On the other hand, some changed their names. For example, Adani Transmission is now known as Adani Energy Solutions, IIFL Wealth Management has changed its name to 360 One Wam and Welspun India is now called Welspun Living, among others.

*This is the average market capitalisation (October to September)
*ROCE stands for Return on Capital Employed
*RONW stands for Return on Net Worth

Note Names are representative as promoter holdings include shares of all the promoters. Value of total promoter holding is calculated by multiplying the number of shares of all the promoters by the market price. Data as of November 10, 2023; only companies that are part of the BT500 have been considered

The methodology used to prepare the BT500 2022 list that ranks the top 500 listed firms in India by average market capitalisation

India's largest companies have been ranked based on market capitalisation by Business Today every year since 1992. This year's rankings are based on the average market capitalisation of the companies for the 12-month period from October 1, 2021 to September 30, 2022.

We began with a master sample of 4,271 listed and actively traded companies. We have used the BSE market capitalisation for all cases, except companies that are listed only on the NSE. Some 230 companies that were not traded on at least 20 per cent of the 249 total trading days in the October 2021-September 2022 period, were excluded from the list. Thereafter, we extracted the average (daily) market capitalisation of each company over the period under consideration and used it to rank the top 1,000 companies.

For a deeper perspective, we have also provided the average market capitalisation over the past two fiscals (FY22 and FY21), return on net worth (RONW) and return on capital employed (ROCE), in the tables. We have also ranked companies based on assets, profit after tax, total income and debt, and taken only consolidated numbers except in cases where companies don't report their consolidated results.