Nine Indian firms in Forbes most innovative growth list

Godrej Consumer Products leads pack at 31st position globally and enterprise value of $4.25 bn

As many as nine Indian firms have made it to the Forbes World's 100 most innovative growth companies list, which has been topped by New Zealand software accounting firm Xero.

The list has been made on the basis of Innovation Premium, which Forbes described as 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 innovative results (new products, services and markets).

Among the Indian companies, Godrej Consumer Products leads the pack and was ranked 31st globally on the list with an enterprise value of $4.25 billion.

Godrej Consumer Products was founded on November 29, 2000 and its brands include Good knight, Cinthol, Godrej No 1, Expert and Ezee; and it has an innovation premium of 58.7 per cent.

Other Indian firms on the list include ABB India, Marico, United Breweries, Siemens India, Asian Paints, Nestle India, Colgate Palmolive India and Divi's Labs.

ABB India is ranked 37, with an enterprise value of USD 2.7 billion and innovation premium of 56.4 per cent.

Only those companies were considered which have market value of less than USD 10 billion, spend at least 1 per cent of their asset base on R&D and have seven years of public data.

Marico was ranked 53, with innovation premium of 52.8 per cent, United Breweries (60, 51.5 per cent), Siemens India (63, 50.3 per cent), Asian Paints (76, 48.7 per cent), Nestle India (78, 48.3 per cent), Colgate-Palmolive India (87, 46.8 per cent) and Divi's Laboratories (99, 45.5 per cent).

"Our method relies on investors' ability to identify firms they expect to be innovative now and in the future," Forbes said.

The list excludes energy and mining firms, whose market value is tied more to commodity prices than to innovation.

The overall list was topped by Xero, which enjoys an innovation premium of as high as 91.7 per cent, followed by NetSuite (2nd, 89 per cent), Monitise (3rd, 85.6 per cent), Insulet (4th, 82.4 per cent) and DexCom (5th, 82.3 per cent).

Others in the top 10 include ASOS ranked 6th with an innovation premium of 78.3 per cent, followed by athenahealth (7th, 77.2 per cent), Ultimate Software (8th, 74.3 per cent), M3 (9th, 74.3 per cent) and Concur Technologies (10th, 72.1 per cent).