How We Ranked Them

The exercise for putting together the fastest growing companies list got underway with the unaudited data for financial years 2014-15, 2013-14, 2012-13 and 2011-12 available with Ace Equity Database, an extensive repository of financial as well as non-financial information on listed and unlisted Indian firms.

We began with a universe of 3,051 listed companies, keeping out trading, banks and financial companies. Trading companies were excluded because they often trade on behalf of others; similarly, the income of banks and financial services companies were kept out as their income is basically the interest or fee they earn from the deposits.

We then proceeded to divide the companies into five categories based on their net sales value for 2014-15 for a more accurate comparison. The super heavyweights had a net sales of Rs 50,000 crore and above. It was followed by heavyweights having net sales between Rs 10,000 crore and Rs 50,000 crore. The middleweights comprised of companies with net sales between Rs 5,000 crore and Rs 10,000 crore while the welterweights had net sales between Rs 1,000 crore and Rs 5,000 crore. The featherweights formed the last category, with companies with net sales between Rs 100 crore and Rs 1,000 crore. All the companies with net sales below Rs 100 crore were not considered in the final rankings.

We only included companies for which net sales data was available for the last five years. The ranking of the companies is based on the last four years’ year-on-year growth in net sales. Average 4-year PAT growth and 4-year PAT CAGR have been showcased to highlight companies with high sales growth but low or negative PAT growth over the years. Average 4-year sales CAGR has been used to highlight company’s long-term sales growth between 2011-12 and 2014-2015. There are companies that have seen a loss in net sales and profit after Tax over the last year but have still been included in the winners list because our ranking criterion is 4-year average sales.

This list does not account for the pre-acquisition value of net sales of the companies that have been acquired by the companies present in the current database.