5 Indian firms in world's most innovative companies list

Five Indian companies -- Larsen & Toubro, Hindustan Unilever, Infosys, Tata Consultancy and Sun Pharma -- have made it to the list of 100 most innovative firms in the world prepared by US business magazine Forbes.

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Engineering giant L&T is ranked among the top ten companies, ahead of Google and Starbucks. L&T is ranked ninth in the list. US-based Salesforce.Com tops the rankings.

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The US also dominates the top five chart, as four out of the top five innovators -- Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Amazon.Com, Red Hat -- are based in America.

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China-based Baidu is at the fifth place, followed by US-based Intuitive Surgical (6th), Japan's Rakuten (7th), US firm Edwards Lifesciences (8th) and UK's ARM Holdings (10th).

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Fast moving consumer goods company Hindustan Unilever is positioned 12th, while global technology services firm Infosys holds the 19th slot.

Tata group firm Tata Consultancy Services is placed at the 29th position.

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Specialty pharma company Sun Pharmaceutical Industries is ranked at the 38th position.

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Forbes termed Infosys cofounder and CEO S D Shibulal, as both "observer and experimenter". In 30 years at Infosys, "there is nothing that I have not done," the magazine quoted Shibulal as saying.

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He was the first sales person, has done account management, launched its internet consulting practice, is a network expert, helped design and launch its first ecommerce application, and has been the head of both delivery and sales.

"That's why at Infosys, where geeks are a dime a dozen, he is revered as a 'gizmo guru'," Forbes said.

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Forbes used the "Innovation Premium" which is calculated first by projecting a company's income from existing businesses, plus anticipated growth from those businesses, and look at the net present value of those cash flows.

To be considered in the list, at least 7 years of financial data for a given firm is needed. Besides, firms with market value greater than $10 billion and those which make some investment in R&D were considered, Forbes said.