Five Indian Firms Make Their Way In Forbes List Of Most Innovative Companies

Five Indian companies are among Forbes' list of the world's 100 most innovative companies that investors think are most likely to "generate big, new growth ideas". The list includes firms like Hindustan Unilever and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).

The annual 'World's Most Innovative Companies' list was released on August 20 (Wednesday). California-based global cloud computing company Salesforce was spotted at the top position for the fourth year in a row.

Other than consumer goods company Hindustan Unilever, which is ranked 14th, and IT major Tata Consultancy Services, which secured 57^th rank, construction services firm Larsen & Toubro (L&T) managed to stay at 58^th position in the list. The two other Indian companies were pharma major Sun Pharma Industries, which was seen at 65^th number, and Bajaj Auto secured 96^th rank in the list.

Mumbai-based company Hindustan Unilever recorded an innovation premium of 54.7%. On the other hand IT service firm TCS’s innovation premium was 39.58% and the company had a market cap of $71.25 billion as of May 2014. L&T had an innovation premium of 39.4% and a market cap of $ 19.81 billion. Sun Pharma recorded an innovation premium of 38.34% and a market cap of $19.88 billion and Bajaj Auto’s innovation premium reached 31.73%. It registered a market cap of $10 billion.

As per Forbes, the innovation premium is 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.

With a market cap of $ 35.87 billion, Salesforce had an innovation premium of 75.9%. The company continued its reign as Forbes' most innovative company for the fourth straight year.

Notably, the US was home to a majority of the firms on the list with 41 firms headquartered in the country. This was followed by Europe with 29 companies.