Tata widens lead on other top brands

Brand value grows 12% in the past year, far ahead of Reliance and Airtel

The Tatas continued to dominate India's biggest brands list, drawn up by international brand valuation firm Interbrand, for a third year in a row.

The Tata brand has grown 12 per cent in value in the past year, ahead of Reliance and Airtel, which come in at numbers two (growing two per cent) and three (growing 10 per cent), respectively. Tata's 2015 brand value is Rs 66,940 crore versus Reliance's Rs 34,019 crore and Airtel's Rs 32,302 crore.

The Tata brand contributes nearly 17 per cent in value to the top-30 list released on Thursday by Interbrand, similar to their contribution in last year's list.

Tata's contribution this year is in a growing market, which implies it has retained share in an expanding market. The growth in cumulative value of the top-30 brands this year is nearly 11 per cent to Rs 4 lakh crore, from Rs 3.61 lakh crore last year.

A similar trend can be seen with the top-three brands. Their total contribution to the top-30 list is 33 per cent, similar to last year. But this year's contribution is happening in a growing market.

"The big contributor to the growth in Tata's brand value has been Tata Consultancy Services," said Ashish Mishra, managing director, Interbrand India. TCS is the largest contributor to Tata Group's market capitalisation and profits.

At Rs 4.66 lakh crore in market capitalisation, TCS is ahead of all Indian companies listed on BSE. The company had revenue of Rs 94,600 crore in 2014-15.

Reliance Industries' revenue in 2014-15 was Rs 3.75 lakh crore and its market capitalisation was Rs 3.08 lakh crore.

Bharti Airtel's 2014-15 revenue was Rs 92,135 crore and its market capitalisation Rs 1.25 lakh crore.

Interbrand's top-10 list this year is similar to last year's.

At number four is LIC, which has moved up from fifth position. Its brand value is Rs 22,894 crore. Replacing LIC this year is State Bank of India with a brand value of Rs 22,682 crore. HDFC, Infosys, ICICI, Godrej and Mahindra occupy the sixth to tenth positions, respectively.

In the top 10, Infosys, LIC and HDFC showed the sharpest growth. Infosys' rate of growth in terms of brand value was 19 per cent, while LIC and HDFC was 17 per cent respectively.

Mishra says these brands showed a sharp spike because of the interplay of business and technology. "Technology as a sector is dominant in this year's list, besides financial services and auto. But most top-10 brands have demonstrated this ability to allow technology to become central to their business plans. Which means they are conscious of consumer trends," he says. Cumulatively, the top-10 brands contribute 66 per cent value to the 2015 list of brands, similar to the figure last year.

A new entrant on this year's list is Zee with a brand value of Rs 4,195 crore, while some of the top risers include Kotak, Tanishq, HCL, Asian Paints, Maruti Suzuki and Dabur. And the losers include ONGC, Reliance-ADAG and Idea.