As many as 22 Indian companies, including Educomp Solutions, Jain Irrigation and Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, have been named in the latest '200 Best under a Billion' list for the Asia-Pacific region by US magazine Forbes.
India, with 22 entries, is fourth in terms of the number of the companies included in the list, which is led by Greater China outperforming the others in the Asia-Pacific region with 88 entries followed by Taiwan and Japan with 24 and 23 firms, respectively.
The annual 'Best Under a Billion' list picks the best 200 small and medium sized companies from 24,155 listed firms in the Asia-Pacific region.
Those with less than $1 billion in sales are vested for consistent growth of sales and profits over three years.
Other Indian firms on the list include, Blue Dart Express, Blue Star, Brigade Enterprises, Geodesic Information Systems, MIC Electronics, Nucleus Software Exports, Opto Circuits, Praj Industries and Unity Infrastructure.
About Educomp the magazine stated that, the company whose main business is developing and licensing digital lessons, has had a good run with its revenue up from $12.5 million in 2006 to $71 million for fiscal 2008, while profits jumped from $3 million to $18 million.
The company led by Shantanu Prakash is also cashing in on the education drive in the country by bringing computers to the classrooms.
Further, Thermax, Omnitech Infosolutions, Techno Electric & Engineering, Divi's Labs, Cords Cable Industries, Tulip Telecom and Ederx Services also find a place on the list. Bose, who is said to have started repairing radios in high school, got a PhD in electrical engineering from MIT.
The first contracts for Bose Corp were for NASA and US military improving audio communications and the company's sales are believed to be more than $2 billion.
Bose has also been inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, Forbes said.
About IT and BPO firm Syntel Inc's Bharat Desai, the magazine said that he was born in Kenya, but at the age of 11 he moved to India, where he later studied engineering at Indian Institute of Technology.
Desai moved to the US in 1976 for a programming job at TCS and later founded Syntel with his wife Neerja Sethi.
The company, which went public in 1997, now outsources its clients' information technology and business process operations overseas, mostly to Asia. Desai has also represented India in bridge world championship in 1995.
About Khosla, also an IIT graduate, the magazine said that he failed in an attempt to start a soy milk company catering to Indians without refrigerators.
Two years after co-founding electric design automation company Daisy Systems in 1980, Khosla joined Andy von Bechtolsheim, Billy Joy and Scott Nealy to form Sun Microsystems.
At Sun Micro, he served as CEO for short time before turning to a full-time investor in 1996.
