The communications market in India for the fiscal 1999-00 is
estimated at Rs 53,173.52 crore a growth of about 22 percent over the 1998-99
figures of Rs 43,609.42 crore. Increase in the number of communication companies
and a good economy were responsible for this impressive performance.
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) contributed the
lion’s share with an estimated Rs 20,405.83 crore to the total turnover. If
the planned corporatization of DoT gets completed by 30 September 2000, which
seems unlikely, the net revenue would increase further. According to officials
in DoT, AF Fergusson, the consultants for the DoT corporatization process, has
valued DoT at Rs 2,50,000 crore.
The V&D 100 Club companies contributed Rs 28,447.14 crore,
while others contributed a total of Rs 4,320.55 crore. The others category
includes companies like Motorola, Siemens Public Communications Network Ltd,
Agilent, Shyam Telecom, Hindustan Cables, and others that did not participate in
the survey. It also includes companies outside the V&D 100 Club, which are
featured in the survey.
The Top 10 Club contributed 35.9 percent of the total revenue
with combined revenues of Rs 19,085.5 crore. This time Lucent had a wild card
entry to the Top 10 Club as it performed exceptionally well by netting a
turnover of Rs 452.5 crore, registering a growth of around 170 percent–the
highest in the group.
The top three players–VSNL, MTNL, and ITI–retained their
positions this time also. Sterlite moved up the ladder from #5 to #4, whereas
TCIL slid down to be at #5. Wipro repeated its three-figure growth and moved
from #9 to #7. HFCL and HTL slipped one position each in the ranking.
It was clearly a services-dominated V&D 100 Club. As many
as 33 services companies featured in the top bracket. Cellular companies
occupied 19 positions while three positions went to paging companies. Internet
and basic services providers occupied two and four positions respectively. Not
surprisingly, five public sector companies featured in the Top 10 Club with
combined turnover of Rs 16,072.3 crore.
There were actually 107 companies in the Top 100 bracket
because seven companies shared their ranks. Bhagyanagar Metals and Birla
Ericsson were jointly ranked 26th, MRO-Tek and Escotel were ranked 44th, Apcom
and Optel shared the 74th rank, Tata Infotech and Modi Telstra were ranked 79th,
Usha Martin Telekom and Gujarat Communications shared the 83rd rank, and Bharti
BT, Srinivas Cellcom, Hexacomm shared the 97th rank. A total of about 600
companies have been profiled this time in the survey.
We have attempted to provide more detailed information about
the top companies this time. Not only that, even the number of segments have
been increased from 12 to 18 for the purpose of analysis. The new segments
include telecom training, feature phones, computer telephony, call centre, telco
software, and PCO. There is also a new section on Top Groups in the
telecommunication field.
In the Sixth V&D 100 Survey, the companies were ranked on the basis of
their turnover during the 1999-00 fiscal (1 April 1999-30 March 2000). The
turnovers have been taken from the filled-in questionnaires sent by the
companies. Wherever the turnovers were not mentioned, estimates were made for
the purpose of ranking.