BusinessWeek list has 8 Indian firms

Eight Indian companies, led by the Oil & Natural Gas Corporation, figure among the top 1,000 companies listed by BusinessWeek magazine.

The ranking is based on market capitalisation on May 31, 2004. Apart from ONGC, the other companies to figure in the list are Reliance Industries, Indian Oil Corporation, Wipro, Infosys Technologies, Hindustan Lever, Bharti Tele-Ventures and the State Bank of India.

ONGC has a global ranking of 260, with a market capitalisation of $19.67 billion, Reliance (402 and $13.22 billion, respectively), IOC (638 and $8.60 billion), Wipro (704 and $ 7.8 billion), Infosys (727 and $ 7.61 billion), Hindustan Lever (816 and $6.64 billion), Bharti Tele-Ventures (948 and $5.65 billion) and SBI (993 and $5.39 billion).

Earlier this year, ONGC completed a hugely successful public offering, while the two software companies Infosys and Wipro joined the billion-dollar club in terms of sales in 2003-04.

The net profits of Reliance stood at over $1 billion in 2003-04.

The top three companies in the BusinessWeek 1000 list are General Electric ($328.11 billion), Microsoft ($284.43 billion) and Exxon-Mobil ($283.61 billion).