How We Did It

The survey was carried out on listed and unlisted companies with total revenues between ` 1 crore and ` 500 crore in 2014/15

This is the seventh edition of the Business Today Best SME Survey. We have tweaked the methodology this time in order to evaluate genuine and financially sound companies. The survey was carried out on listed and unlisted companies with total revenues between `1 crore and `500 crore in 2014/15. In addition to this, companies whose latest, audited financial year results are not available were eliminated. We dipped into the Ace Equity database to pull out numbers of companies for the study period 2012/13, 2013/14 and 2014/15. Companies that did not make profits in any one of the three fiscals were not considered. Further, companies with negative net worth in any one of the three years were eliminated. Companies whose accounting periods were within the 9-15 months range were only considered. Altogether 3,784 companies fulfilled the above criterion.

These companies went through an extensive round of calculation where we measured their three-year average growth of revenue, profit, net worth along with three-year average PAT margin and three-year average return on capital employed (ROCE). Each company was scored on the basis of these parameters, and the scores were combined with equal weightage.

Then the companies were divided into three revenue groups – between `1 crore to `100 crore; `101-250 crore and `251-500 crore – and further into four segments – agriculture, manufacturing, services and trading. Then, each company was scored on how far it outperformed/underperformed the median for their segments. These were added to each company’s score to get the final tally. For the Global Business Excellence award, growth in exports and share of exports in total income of the company were considered. The top three companies in each category were presented before a jury for the final decision on the winners.

The jury comprised R.K. Gupta, Executive Director, Bank of Maharashtra; Anil Bhardwaj, Secretary-General, FISME; Dr. J.S. Juneja, Chairman, SME Committee, AIMA; S. Ravi, board member IDBI Bank and UTI and Praveen Bhambani, Leader, Private & Entrepreneurial Business, Pwc. ~

THE JURY Standing (L- R): Praveen Bhambani, Leader, Private and Entrepreneurial Business, PwC India; Prosenjit Datta, Editor, Business Today; Anil Bhardwaj, SecretaryGeneral, FISME. Sitting (L- R): R.K. Gupta, ED, Bank of Maharashtra; Dr J.S. Juneja,...