Making a brand name popular is no easy feat. It requires a great deal of vision, marketing acumen and near to perfection execution of strategies to achieve such targets.
We, as Indians, usually have a belief that overseas brands offer more value for money when compared to their Indian counterparts. But at the same time, it is important to note that there are countless Indian origin brands out there that offer significant global competition to foreign brands. This even includes some Indian Startups that have gone on to disrupt markets in countless countries.
Let’s look at some of the best in the domain
The top 20 Indian companies in the World
1) Peter England
Believe it or not, Peter England is a Top Indian Brand. Here we see a textbook example of how brands go to lengths to make themselves sound foreign so that customers can synchronize them better with their status symbols.
Owned by the Madura Fashion and Lifestyle, a division of the Aditya Birla Group, the brand has its presence in more than 300 cities around the globe.
Peter England is one of the largest brands in the menswear category in the country with a consignment movement of more than 5 million garments a year.
The brand is popularly known for its premium range of shirts and formals.
2) Cafe Coffee Day
Image SourceThis list would not be complete without the mention of one of the most popular coffee cafe chains – Cafe Coffee Day (CCD).
Marketing itself as the favorite hangout spot to host casual meetings and hearty talks, the company Coffee Day Global Limited finds its base in the town of Chikmagalur, Karnataka. They grow their own coffee on a 12,000-acre estate and are the largest exporter of Arabica beans in Asia.
There are more than 1530 cafe outlets in India alone and the chain has now expanded internationally to countries like Austria, Malaysia, Egypt, Czech Republic, etc.
3) Tata Group
Tata is one of the most well known Indian brands in the world. The brand finds its presence in multiple industries including chemicals, consumer products, energy, engineering, IT Systems, Services like TIS, telecommunications and consultancy, steel industry, etc.
Tata has a stronghold in the minds of the Indian consumers and is also recognized globally now as a familiar brand. It finds its offices in more than 80 countries around the world.
Holding the tag as India’s largest conglomerate, the Tata Group saw a revenue of $103.51 Billion is the financial year of 2015-16. It also has an army of 660,000 total employees on their payroll.
4) State Bank of India
SBI is the largest and the most popular Indian Bank in the world. The government-owned bank has more than 14,000 branches and 191 foreign offices in around 36 countries. If that is not impressive enough, consider this – the total valuation of their assets stand at INR 20,480 trillion or $300 billion!
As of 2016, SBI finds its place in the list of Fortune 500 Global companies at the 232nd position.
5) Titan
We all are familiar with the prowess of Titan in the watchmaking space. What you may not know is depicted through these awe-inspiring numbers.
Titan Company manufactures roughly 15 million watches per annum for a userbase of over 100 million customers around the world. There are 4 brands existing under the purview of the company, namely Titan, Fastrack, Sonata, and Xylys. There are also dozens of sub-brands under each main brand.
Titan boasts a 60% domestic market share and is present in around 32 countries, mainly in the regions of Middle-East, Asia Pacific, and Africa. Moreover, the total brand value of the Titan Group stands at more than $15 billion!
6) Bira91
Talk about a brand getting viral offline through word of mouth (#recursion). This is the story of a new beloved beer in town – Bira91. Launched in 2015 and already finding its presence throughout the Indian and US markets, Bira has disrupted the casual beer market.
While it may not be present throughout the world at this point, by the looks of its explosive kickstart it may very well be by the time this blog post matures.
Available in 2 versions – Bira White and Bira Blonde, at the time of the launch, each pint of the beer was priced at INR 220. The price has already fallen to INR 150 a bottle and the company plans to drop it further to INR 100. This comes after the initial projections of its success fell short as the demand outwitted supply by almost 120 times.
Even the founders did not expect it to do so well so soon.
7) Old Monk
Image Source
Old Monk Rum or OMR is 60-year-old Indian dark rum brand that has arguably taken the world of rums by storm. There are many variants of the popular brand like Old Monk Supreme Rum, Old Monk Gold Reserve Rum, Old Monk XXX Rum, Old Monk Deluxe XXX Rum, Old Monk White Rum and Old Monk Legend – Limited Edition.
These are aged for a minimum of 8 years. Old Monk has also been the biggest Indian made foreign liquor (IMFL) brand for a number of years now.
The most interesting aspect of the brand is that their expenditure on marketing over the decades amount to negligible sums. It mainly depends on word of mouth advertising for its success around the world which in itself speaks about the tremendous user base of the brand.
Having withdrawals already?
8) Bharti Airtel
Another popular Indian brand on the list, Airtel is the most marketed Indian telecom service. It was the first service provider in India to introduce 4G networks and has become the largest telecom in India as well as the third largest in the world.
Airtel is based out of New Delhi and runs in 18 countries around the world, mainly spanning the continents of Africa and Asia. In the business world, the company is particularly known to be the first telecom operator to function on the business model of outsourcing everything except sales, marketing, and finance departments.
Airtel also went on to introduce innovative apps like Hike Messenger and Wync Music which are giving serious competition to overseas apps in the respective domains due to their strong ‘product differentiation’ strategies.
9) Jaguar
Image source
The name of the brand often leaves an impact of a foreign manufacturer on the customers. But it may amaze you to know that it is indeed owned by none other than the Tata conglomerate which acquired it from Ford.
Jaguar comes under the purview of the company Jaguar Land Rover which has their headquarter in Coventry, United Kingdom.
It is intriguing to note that when the company was founded in 1922, they originally planned to sell motorcycle sidecars and ventured into manufacturing cars much later.
Also Read: 10 Best Car Manufacturers in India for 2018 You Need To Know
10) Jet Airways
Jet Airways is an Indian airlines company based out of Mumbai and was founded on April 1st, 1992. Owned by the Tailwinds Private Limited group, it is the 2nd largest airlines in the country, trumped only by Indigo, and possesses a market share of 21.2%.
It operates a total of 300 flights daily with a fleet size of 114 airplanes, handling a customer base of more than 21 million passengers in a year.
Jet Airways has various offices around the world in over 76 countries and operates flights to 47 destinations within India as well as 21 international destinations around the globe.
11) Zomato
Zomato is a popular Indian food startup which was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Gurugram, Haryana. It has now gradually expanded to 23 different countries with more than a million restaurants listed on the platform. Zomato is a search and discovery app which helps you to find the best restaurants around the city with relevant details like uploaded menus, booking confirmations and operation timings.
It was initially launched under the brand named Foodiebay and was later renamed to Zomato in 2008.
Zomato has quickly found its feet in the food-tech domain and their user base now stands at 19 million active users clocking a total of 90 million visits in a month.
It is arguably the fastest growing global Indian startup in the world.
12) InMobi
Imagine a startup giving competitions to the likes of Google and Apple. This amazing feat has been achieved by InMobi, an Indian startup founded in 2007. InMobi is a platform pertaining to mobile advertising and discovery which helps customers to find targeted products and services via mobile adverts.
It has expanded quite well with 17 offices around the world and boasts of 750 million users around 160 countries.
To further add to its accolades, InMobi secured a rank in MIT Technology Review’s top 50 most disruptive companies of 2013. On the other hand, it also bagged the top spot in the top 10 list of the most in India by Fast Company.
13) Magzter
Another prominent startup born in India, Magzter provides users with online magazines. What makes the service unique is the fact that anyone can sign up on the platform as a publisher and start uploading their own magazines to be accessed by readers all around the world.
The platform currently boasts of more than 11 million users in more than 150 countries. There are more than 600 magazines to read on the platform including the ones from premium publishers such as Top Gear, Forbes, Vogue and Nat Geo.
The company has its offices spread in 7 countries around the world and the readers can access the magazines in up to 33 different languages.
14) Indian Oil Corporation Limited
IOCL or Indian Oil is the largest commercial enterprise in India. The company finds a fortress in the Indian market and also has subsidiary companies in countries like Sri Lanka, UAE, and Mauritius. The brand has also gone on to invest in the space of alternative energies.
During the previous financial year (2015-16), IOCL reported a net profit of INR 104 Billion.
In the Fortune 500 list of 2016, Indian Oil grabbed the title of the highest ranked Indian company at a rank of 161st position. Moreover, it is the top petroleum trading company in the Asia-Pacific region.
15) Royal Enfield
Although people have known it as a British brand over the years, Royal Enfield was ultimately acquired by Eicher Motors of Chennai. Enfield is a well recognized global brand and has reserved a respectable place in the cruiser motorbikes category. It is the oldest bike making company in the whole world.
Consider this. In 2014, Royal Enfield sold a total of 300,000 bikes and went on to clock a record income of $482 million. Whereas, its major competitor Harley Davidson went on to sell around 260,000 units.
Siddhartha Lal, CEO of Royal Enfield has also gone on to say that the company aims to become the largest motorcycle manufacturer around the globe in the middle-weight category.
Also read: 10 Best Bike Companies in India (2018) You Should Ride Once
16) Freshdesk Inc
Freshdesk is a Chennai based Indian Startup which provides cloud-based support to the customers of their clients. It was founded with the sole aim to enable companies, both big and small, provide great customer service. They have bridged the communication gap between businesses and their customers.
More than 80,000 global businesses today are using the services of Freshdesk to achieve better customer support systems. There are more than 800 employees on the company’s payroll.
In 2011, Freshdesk also went on to win the Microsoft Bizspark Startup Challenge.
And all this in 5 years. One crazy achievement.
17) Louis Philippe
Another entry in the garments segment, although Louis Philippe is named after a King of France from the 19th century, the finds its origins in India and is owned by Madura Fashion and Lifestyle group.
It refers to itself as India’s largest brand in the premier lifestyle wear section.
Similar to Peter England, the international brand caters to a bunch of different age groups and both genders.
18) Micromax and YU
The largest Indian smartphones brands, both Micromax and YU are products of the ingenious mind of their founder Rahul Sharma. While Micromax is known throughout the world for their Canvas series, YU is known for their disruptive smartphone features that raise the bar in the market every time a new phone is launched.
Launched in 2014, YU is the sole brand in India that officially hold the rights to the Cyanogen OS. On the other hand, Micromax is better known for their affordable range of smartphones, tablets, TVs, computers as well as data cards.
Also Read: 25 Best Mobile Phone Brands in India That Are Ruling the Year 2018
19) Godrej Group
Godrej is a 120-year-old Indian Conglomerate which has its main office in Mumbai.
Negating popular belief, it operates in various types of industries, namely appliances, furniture, real estate, security, agricultural products and many more.
The global brand is mainly divided into 2 main holding companies – Godrej Industries Ltd and Godrej and Boyce. The former has offices in more than 40 countries around the world and also exports to around 60 overseas nations. Whereas, the latter operates in major markets of Europe, US, Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Both of these companies have a host of subsidiary brands according to the diverse markets they operate in.
20) Lakme Cosmetics
Wrapping up diverse our list of famous Indian brands in the world, Lakme is a global brand in the cosmetics industry. It is owned by the Hindustan Unilever group and is dubbed as the best cosmetics brand in India.
Interestingly, Lakme was named after a French Opera singer which was well known for her beauty and grace.
Moreover, according to the brand trust report of 2014, Lakme was named as the 36th most trusted brand in the country. Lakme finds its presence in the markets of more than 70 countries with a product line of about 300 diverse products owing to their rigorous product research.
Conclusion
This completes our list of the world famous Indian brands. All these brands or companies found their roots in India and then went out to capture overseas markets.
Globalisation has indeed been instrumental to enable such diverse global expansions. But at the same time, they also offer stiff competitions to these companies as it is often not easy to enter different markets which already have current players as placeholders.
Hence, it is commendable on the part of these brands to achieve such successful expansions.
Did we miss out on any of your favorite brands?
Please share your views in the comments section below!