Godrej Consumer heads 9 Indian firms in Forbes ‘innovative growth’ list

Nine Indian companies have made it onto the Forbes 'World's 100 most innovative growth companies' list; the Indian leader being Godrej Consumer Products, which was ranked 31st with an enterprise value of $4.25 billion.

Other Indian firms on the list are ABB India, Marico, United Breweries, Siemens India, Asian Paints, Nestle India, Colgate Palmolive India and Divi's Labs.

The list is topped by New Zealand software accounting firm Xero.

Godrej Consumer Products was founded on 29 November 2000; its brands include Good Knight mosquito repellent, Cinthol toothpaste, Godrej No 1, Expert and Ezee; and it has an innovation premium of 58.7 per cent, according to Forbes.

The list has been made on the basis of Innovation Premium, which Forbes described as a measure of how much investors have bid up the stock price of a company above the value of its existing business based on expectations of future innovative results like new products, services and markets.

ABB India is ranked 37th, with an enterprise value of $2.7 billion and innovation premium of 56.4 per cent.

Only those companies were considered which have market value of less than $10 billion, spend at least 1 per cent of their asset base on R&D and have seven years of public data.

Marico was ranked 53, with an innovation premium of 52.8 per cent, United Breweries was 60th with 51.5 per cent premium, Siemens India (63 and 50.3 per cent respectively), Asian Paints (76 and 48.7 per cent), Nestle India (78 and 48.3 per cent), Colgate-Palmolive India (87 and 46.8 per cent) and Divi's Laboratories (99 and 45.5 per cent).

"Our method relies on investors' ability to identify firms they expect to be innovative now and in the future," Forbes said. The list excludes energy and mining firms, whose market value is tied more to commodity prices than to innovation.

The overall list was topped by Xero, which enjoys an innovation premium of as high as 91.7 per cent, followed by NetSuite (2nd, 89 per cent), Monitise (3rd, 85.6 per cent), Insulet (4th, 82.4 per cent) and DexCom (5th, 82.3 per cent).

Others in the top 10 include ASOS ranked 6th with an innovation premium of 78.3 per cent, followed by athenahealth (7th, 77.2 per cent), Ultimate Software (8th, 74.3 per cent), M3 (9th, 74.3 per cent) and Concur Technologies (10th, 72.1 per cent).