UPI parent body and this e-commerce startup are on Times list of top-100 influential companies

• The Times 100 most influential companies of 2023 list has been divided in five sub categories.
• Polygon Labs, a company founded by Sandeep Nailwal and Jaynti Kanani, of Indian origin, has made it to the list too.
• Elon Musk owned SpaceX and language learning app Duolingo are featured in the Leader category

There is good news and not so good news. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Indian Banks' Association (IBA) 2008 launched National Payments Corporation of India or the NPCI has featured in the Times list of top-100 influential companies. What more? Another youngster, Meesho, founded only in 2015, has made it too. The not so good news? These are the only two on the list.

NCPI is a non-profit umbrella organisation for operating retail payments and settlement systems in India. NPCI owns and operates the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and is also in charge of the RuPay payment system, which works like Visa and MasterCard.

Recently, it has created a separate subsidiary to take its product to the global market. According to media reports, it is in talks with Gulf nations, including Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, to expand its UPI service.

Meanwhile, e-commerce platform Meesho, which specialises in retail distribution, has also made it to the coveted list. A few weeks earlier, a report by mobile data analytics provider data.a, Meesho became the fastest shopping app to cross 500 million cumulative downloads.

The categorisation and the notable mentions

The list has been divided in five sub categories – leaders, disruptors, innovators, titans and pioneers. NPCI and Meesho both have been mentioned under the ‘Pioneers’.

The Titans section has big powerhouses such as IBM, JPMorgan Chase, Lockheed Martin etc. An interesting name in this list is TikTok.

Footwear brand Crocs and Polygon Labs, founded by Sandeep Nailwal and Jaynti Kanani, of Indian origin, have been mentioned in the Innovators section.

Elon Musk owned SpaceX, language learning app Duolingo and gaming chipmaker Nvidia are the quick noticeable names under the Leader category.