Aditya Birla Group is reaching new heights. Here is how

Winning streak for Aditya Birla Group continued as it yet again topped Neilsen’s Corporate Monitor (CIM) 2014-15 survey that measures reputation of leading companies in India.

While, the Birla conglomerate retained the top spot for three years in a row now, Tata Motors bagged the second spot, followed by ITC, Axis Bank and Tata Steel.

The survey, shared exclusively with Economic Times, was conducted across 42 companies with over 2,000 respondents in eight metros.

"As a high-performance driven group, we are constantly focusing on building our talent pool to support our business vision. To this end, substantive initiatives taken earlier have since materialised. These include focused endeavours to build a robust talent pipeline; extending the employer brand of our group beyond India; achieving the distinction of becoming the most aspirational employer for professionals and augmenting talent on the technical side," Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chairman of Aditya Birla Group, told ET.

This year, Axis Bank and Reliance Communication broke into the top-10 list.

Some of the parameters for the survey were trust, transparency, demonstration of vision and leadership, financial performance, perceptions of company product and services, workplace environment.

While the Birla Group came up on top for vision and leadership, financial performance and operating style, Tata Steel bagged the top position on product and service quality and workplace management.

"A strong corporate image is one that effectively communicates the company's brand and philosophy. In order to recruit top talent, a company needs to be able to project itself and provide a good idea of what it really represents," a Tata Motors spokesperson told the financial daily.

Meanwhile, Executive Director of Nielsen India, Ajay Macaden, said this year they saw interesting trends.

"With increasing awareness that both the consumer and company have about the concept of reputation, this year saw some interesting trends based on the study. Most of the companies that have made it to the top ten are very visible in the media and have high involvement among large set of stakeholders," said Ajay Macaden, executive director, Nielsen India.

He added that an increasing focus on ad spends, communicating via technology and innovation have helped consumers spontaneously recall and talk about certain banking and finance sector companies, an improvement from last year.

Meanwhile, ITC topped in corporate social responsibility.

"Stakeholders, investors and consumers continue to look for quality and talent within the top companies in India. They have also upped the ante on judging companies on the basis of their CSR activities, with sanitation and healthcare education being of critical importance,” Macaden told ET.