Business Today 14 September 2025

In an age of pivots, where business models are hit overnight by external factors like Trump’s tariffs or domestic policies like the ban on real-money gaming, Business Today’s annual ranking of India’s top-performing companies has also pivoted after 33 long years. We have moved from ranking by market capitalisation to a single primary metric that investors prize—that of profitability. Why this switch? A list based purely on market cap does not fully capture real profitability and cash flows, the size of free float and control, the burden of debt versus cash, or the distortions that accompany hype cycles. Investors don’t own “size”, they own a claim on future profits. While earnings can be cyclical or subject to accounting practices, profitability remains the clearest, most comparable signal of a sustainable business…

LEADING BY LENDING HDFC BANK, SBI, AND ICICI BANK RECORD HIGHEST PAT GROWTH AMONG MAJOR COMPANIES IN THE PAST DECADE ₹ 16.94 LAKH CRORE THE TOTAL PAT OF ALL BT500 COMPANIES IN FY25, UP 11% FROM ₹15.28 LAKH CRORE IN FY24 ₹ 392 LAKH CRORE THE TOTAL MARKET CAPITALISATION OF BT500 COMPANIES AS ON AUGUST 18, 2025 57.19% THE TOTAL SHAREHOLDING OF DOMESTIC INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS IN CROMPTON GREAVES CONSUMER ELECTRICALS—HIGHEST IN THE BT500 LIST—AS ON JUNE 2025 GROWTH ENGINES BANKING & FINANCE, OIL & GAS AND IT ARE TOP CONTRIBUTORS TO INDIA INC’S PROFITABILITY FIGURES IN BRACKETS SHOW NUMBER OF COMPANIES IN THE PARTICULAR SECTOR IN BT500 LIST SOURCE ACE EQUITY TOP TAXPAYERS HUGE PROFITS TRANSLATE INTO HIGHER TAX CONTRIBUTION TO THE EXCHEQUER FIGURES IN ₹ CRORE FOR FY25 SOURCE…

Tata Consultancy Services has been the bellwether for the Indian IT industry, which is facing cost pressures and technology disruption, especially from artificial intelligence (AI). Despite this, TCS has retained its position in BT’s list of the top 10 most profitable companies. K. Krithivasan, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, explains what makes the company tick and the outlook for the future. Edited excerpts: Q: From a strategic point of view, what has TCS got right in the last two-three years? A: TCS has pursued a future-ready strategy built on three pillars: embedding AI at scale, bringing innovation closer to clients, and preparing our workforce for the skills of tomorrow. These aren’t just ideas, but key drivers that have allowed us to thrive in an environment marked by technological disruption,…

IF SOMEONE HAD told you that the list of top ten profitable companies would one day have five entries from the public sector, you might have laughed it off, right? Well, you can’t be blamed as, for years, PSUs were branded as a den of inefficiency and political interference. Not anymore. In FY20, the BT500 profit-wise listing had three public sector undertakings (PSUs), State Bank of India (SBI), Coal India and Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), in the top 10. In FY18, only ONGC and NTPC had made the cut. But the FY25 list has—apart from SBI, Coal India and ONGC—Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) and Power Finance Corporation (PFC) as well. Of course, the big boys in the private sector—ranging from diversified conglomerates such as Reliance Industries…

THE BT500 LIST will now focus on ranking the most profitable companies. Since 1992, the BT500 list has been ranked based on market valuation. As there are more listed companies now, Indian stock exchanges feature more than 4,000 profitable companies. We began with a master sample of around 5,100 listed companies on the stock exchanges. About 240 companies that were not traded on at least 20% of the total 249 trading days in the July 2024-June 2025 period were excluded from the list. Thereafter, we extracted the consolidated profit after tax (PAT) of each company for FY25 and used it to rank the top 500 companies. For a deeper perspective, we compared the latest PAT with the previous year’s figure and have also provided the one-year average market capitalisation for the…

FOR AWL AGRI BUSINESS, FY25 was marked by a big change in ownership. In July, Wilmar International raised its stake in the firm, formerly Adani Wilmar, to 64% after a ₹7,150 crore deal, becoming the majority shareholder, while the Adani family’s stake fell to 11%. The firm reported a sharp turnaround with a whopping 582% jump in profit after tax (PAT), the highest increase in the BT500 India’s Most Profitable Companies list for FY25, while net sales rose 24% to ₹63,672 crore. Angshu Mallick, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of AWL Agri Business, attributes this resilience to a unique blend of global expertise and local execution. He insists that operations remain unchanged as AWL continues to use Adani’s ports and logistics infrastructure while strengthening its own supply chain. “Wilmar…