HPCL

“All that glitters is not gold.” That axiom should be given a new spin by putting it as, “All gold does not glitter,” for there is also the small matter of black gold – or oil – to think about. And if one award were to go for innovation in contribution to environment & health, the winner, by miles, would be Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL), the Rs.646.89 billion oil mammoth, which has been awarded the honor of being ‘India’s most preferred Auto Fuel’, an award conferred by Awaaz Consumer Awards 2006. And not without good reason either. A corporate entity is always a part of the larger scheme of things (read, the society it exists in). To prove the statement true, the Mumbai refinery of HPCL went ahead and snared the “Golden Peacock Global Award for Environmental Leadership” for the year 2006 in Refinery Sectors, an award that would do Greenpeace proud; all this while its Santacruz ASF bagged the “Golden Peacock Environment Management Award” for the 2nd consecutive year for undertaking a gamut of Safety, Health and Environment Initiatives. Setup in 1991, these awards are now deemed the holy grail of corporate excellence and encompasses, among other disciplines, innovation as well. For records, HPCL has already won 9 “Greentech Gold Safety Awards” for the year 2005-06 for Outstanding Achievement in Safety, Health & Environment. Very rarely has India seen a leading corporation, which – while having no dying need to society that it cares – goes way out to invest in innovative measures that actually eat away into its profits; all of this to implement one measure that is most ethical... contributions to society. HPCL remains our favourite!

Maruti Udyog Limited

Maruti Suzuki has been one of the most successful collaborations in the Indian automobile history. The company came into existence about 25 years ago, when the chronic lack of choices in automobiles gave way to Sanjay Gandhi’s vision for changing things for good. The preceding chain of events brought about the establishment of Maruti Udyog under a technical collaboration with Suzuki Motors Japan in 1981. With per capita income of Indian families not high enough, Maruti Udyog introduced the most innovative car model till date in the history of Indian automobiles – the Maruti 800 – a car that succeeded on the simple premise that it did not have any innovation. The much affordable 800 gave to the low income Indian consumer all that she could have wanted through a high-class car – air conditioning, security from nature and other elemtnes, and most importantly, family travel. With liberalization came more competition from global leaders like Toyota, GM etc. But Maruti Udyog, with its focus on consolidating sustainable competitive advantages, disproved even hardened critics by providing to consumers the best in quality, after sales service network, style and technology, at the lowest of prices. With a massive market share that ranges between 40 to 55%, depending on the quarter one studies, Maruti has been excruciatingly unforgiving on competition, whether through new product launches (where Swift massacred a direct competition from Hyundai’s Getz), or through expanding dealer networks unbelievable (where companies like Toyota and GM have openly accepted that they cannot hope to get more than 10% of marketshare, and that too by 2010). Jagdish Khattar (left), Maruti’s head, must be a proud man, for innovation was never so violent... on competition!

Anil Dhirubhai Group

When Anil Ambani inherited the businesses of Reliance Energy, Reliance Infocomm and Reliance Capital, nobody would have envisioned his frenetic focus on rapidly expanding the organisation through acquisition of various businesses. But where does innovation come into picture within all this? It’s in the spirit of enterprise, and in the vision of becoming astoundingly larger than what normal growth could ever provide. And on these factors, the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) qualifies with pristine flying colours. But then, that never meant that Anil’s individual companies lacked the focus on innovation to even a degree. For starters, Reliance Infocomm is the first mobile company in India to introduce 3D-Animation on mobile phones. Not only that, Reliance Infocomm has introduced R World in Hindi; and by doing so, became the world’s first mobile service provider to offer mobile data services in more than one language on the same handset. Going a step further, they enabled short voice message in any language across the country for both mobile as well as land-line phones through their ‘Talking Message Service’ (TMS). Even their recent tiff with Qualcomm because of high CDMA royalty rates has not reduced the company’s focus on the high growth rural markets. But more critically, innovation for Anil is omnipresent in his corporate strategies. If retail is to Mukesh Ambani’s Rs.25,000 crore, then power plants, hi-tech health cities, and IT projects are to Anil Ambani’s Rs.55,000 crore; an amount that his company is proposing to invest in Orissa to develop specific usage power plants. Further, Anil’s Rs.3.7 billion acquisition of AdLabs shows clearly his, and his corporation’s intent in the entertainment sector. It is not surprising at all that both brothers, Anil & Mukesh, seem to be in a tearing hurry to achieve growth and sales turnovers faster than the other. So who will win? It definitely is not a war amongst the brothers for the above question to be answered one way or the other. But what is extremely clear is that innovation, for a change, has attained newer standards.

Reliance Industries Ltd.

Well, how innovative is Reliance Industries Ltd? To answer this inimitable query, one should perhaps ask another as inimitable question: how innovative is Mukesh Ambani? Of course, he was ranked 42nd amongst the World’s Most Respected Business Leaders (and second amongst Indian ones) by PricewaterhouseCoopers two years back. Of course, he came 13th in Fortune’s Asia Power 25 List. Of course, he was the reason why Reliance’s manufacturing capacities increased by over 1200% within a short period of time. But innovative? Beyond doubt, yes! And a quality that has most imperatively rubbed off on his company. No doubt, Mukesh’s much talked about Rs.25,000 crore investment in the retail sector would be written about for ages to come, but what might be forgotten quite easily is the fact that Mukesh has converted Reliance Industries Ltd into one of the savviest and most innovative project management corporations ever seen in the history of Indian operations. Under this umbrella of project management, is the most important critical success factor of financial planning, including brilliant aspects of tax planning, that Reliance has not only mastered, but has taught in the year 2002, with the merger of Reliance Industries and Reliance Petroleum, the group in one shot saved hundreds of crores of rupees in taxes due to many legally allowed loopholes. A master of even the capital markets, Reliance – India’s only non governmental claim to the Fortune 500 list – has given more appreciation to shareholder value even during its recent demerger, than perhaps any other private corporation in India’s history. And now with its new found impetus to dominate the Indian retail industry, Reliance is replicating the same famed innovative practices in project management, that have allowed it to comfortably beat all that the competition had to offer. With even the likes of global giants like Wal-Mart studying Reliance’s progress with keen interest, it is no doubt that this corporation has a lot of rewriting work to do in the future; the work of rewriting established rules – something that Mukesh would be comfortable with!

CNBC TV18

The Indian television industry was in its nascency when CNBC-TV18 started beaming into Indian homes, Star had arrived in India and Zee was just a year old. In the year 1993, when India was standing with its gates ajar for the winds of globalisation and liberation to take the country by storm, the crew of CNBC-TV18 was ready with its cameras rolling to catch every bit of the marketing action that took place on the Indian soil or elsewhere. And with time, the dedication has not got worn away, in fact its grip on the Indian markets has just got stronger and stronger. CNBC-TV18, a joint venture between CNBC Asia-Pacific and Television Eighteen India Ltd (with TV18 holding 90% stake) is one of the biggest media houses of the country with an impressive hold on the 24 hour news space and on the loyalties of the Indian viewers. Despite the arrival of the new kids on the block like NDTV Profit and Zee Business, CNBC-TV18’s English business news channel is still the most popular among those for whom business means serious business. And to counter the competition from these channels that threw a ‘Hindi’ linguistic bait at corporate India, CNBC-TV18 launched a Hindi 24 hour business channel Awaaz. Needless to say that with such a powerful backing and an experience of more than a decade in this field, Awaaz is going great guns. In this age of Internet revolution, CNBC-TV18 has launched itself in that space too, and is riding high on this new wave with its websites like moneycontrol.com, commodities control. com, ibnlive.com and is going on increasing this web portfolio. Recently TV-18 decided to look beyond business and came up with a 24 hour English news channel, CNN- IBN. In just a few months of its launch, the new channel, with a mercurial on the job leadership from charismatic Rajdeep Sardesai, has proved to be a great success, and is already boasting of some handsome numbers. TV-18 also acquired Channel 7, a 24 hour Hindi news channel from the Dainik Jagran group and with this, has completed its presence in all the genres of Indian news space. CNBCTV18 innovated the concept of providing business news, and never stopped. With its ever expanding footprint in various media, it has the potential to be the first ‘profitable’ news conglomerate!