BusinessWeek Scoreboard BusinessWeek has put together a scoreboard of the top 100 fast-growing companies in Asia , using indices drawn from Standard & Poor/Citigroup Extended Market Indexes for the developed and emerging markets of Asia. The companies have been ranked by three-year growth in sales, profits and return on capital.

About the Trend-setting Countries Japan leads the list with 34 companies from various sectors ranging from advertising (2 companies), apparel retail (3 companies), electronic equipment manufacturers (3 companies), industry machinery (5 companies), internet software and services (4 companies) to semiconductor equipment/semiconductors (3 companies). Taiwan follows Japan with 19 companies; mainly focused on technology such as application software (1 company), computer storage and peripherals (2 companies), electronic equipment manufacturers (3 companies) and semiconductors (2 companies). China features 9 companies on this list. The emphasis here is utilization of natural resources such as coal and consumable fuels, gold production, oil and gas exploration and production. India, Korea and Thailand have 5 companies each listed here. The Indian companies included in the list are Hexaware Technologies and MphasiS BFL in IT consulting and Other Services, followed by Wockhardt and Matrix Laboratories in Pharmaceuticals and Dabur India in Personal Products sectors. Another interesting list emphasizing Asian companies’ growth is the Asia’s top 50 companies from 2006 Fortune Global 500. You can find the list here. This list also has about 32 Japanese companies among the top 50, while only 1 Indian company is featured. Japan plays a key role in Asia’s economy and has favorable policies towards Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). This is a main factor for Japanese companies to occupy more slots on the Asia’s hot growth list; in fact SMEs make up about 99.7% of Japanese enterprises. (Source: Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry http://www.meti.go.jp/english/statistics/index.html)

How does India fare in Asia? The Indian economy has grown at an average rate of 6.5% from 2001 onwards and has achieved 7.5% GDP growth in 2005. Despite India’s slowness in improving infrastructure and introducing socio-economic reforms, the country has seen an upsurge in foreign direct investment (FDI) and institutional investments. IT services continues to be the most promising business sector in India, and has shown rapid growth in the last few years. According to Nasscom-McKinsey reports, the IT services exports are estimated to generate US$57 billion in 2008. Indian companies operating in this segment face a lot of competition from multinational companies including IBM, Accenture, EDS and CSC. The key Indian software companies include TCS, Wipro, Infosys, HCL and Satyam. The profits from these top 5 Indian IT companies grew about 20-30% in 2004-2005. Further, BusinessWeek Info Tech 100 quotes TCS, Wipro, Infosys, Satyam and Bharti Airtel among the global top performers in the industry. The list can be found here. The Indian pharmaceutical market is the world's fourth largest by volume of drugs (8 percent of the global market). The top global players in this market are GlaxoSmithKline, Aventis, Abbott Labs and Pfizer. The top Indian pharmaceutical companies are Cipla, Ranbaxy Labs, Dr. Reddy’s and Nicholas Piramal. Estimates by the Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI) forecast the Indian pharmaceutical market to grow to US$ 25 billion by 2010 from US$ 8.8 billion currently. The Indian companies are reworking their strategy against the global competition with increased headcount, global presence, and NASDAQ and NYSE listings. India’s GDP is expected to grow more than 8% during 2006-2007. With a strong GDP growth, purchasing-power parity and armed with the a larger group of software developers in the world, we can expect more Indian companies from sectors other than IT and pharmaceuticals to feature on Asia’s Hot Growth Companies list in 2007.

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