AB Group tops list of most reputed cos in India, again

Devina Sengupta
The Economic Times
19 May 2015

Tata Motors emerges second in Nielsen’s CIM survey. RCOM, Axis enter top 10 list

Mumbai: Aditya Birla Group has topped Nielsen’s Corporate Image Monitor (CIM) 2014-15 survey that measures reputation of leading companies in the country. Tata Motors bagged the second spot, followed by ITC, Axis Bank and Tata Steel.

Nielsen’s Corporate Image Monitor, shared exclusively with ET, was conducted across 42 companies with over 2,000 respondents in eight metros.

“As a high-performance driven group, we are constantly focusing on building our talent pool to support our business vision. To this end, substantive initiatives taken earlier have since materialised. These include focused endeavours to build a robust talent pipeline; extending the employer brand of our group beyond India; achieving the distinction of becoming the most aspirational employer for professionals and augmenting talent on the technical side,” said Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman of Aditya Birla Group.

While the Birla conglomerate retained its top spot for three years in a row now, Axis Bank and Reliance Communications (RCOM) broke into the top-10 list this year.

Some of the parameters for the study included transparency, trust, demonstration of vision and leadership, perceptions of company product and services, financial performance and workplace environment.

Companies also felt that during job switches, a positive image helps to attract and retain talent. “A strong corporate image is one that effectively communicates the company’s brand and philosophy. In order to recruit top talent, a company needs to be able to project itself and provide a good idea of what it really represents,” a Tata Motors spokesperson said.

While Aditya Birla Group came up on top in areas of vision and leadership, financial performance and operating style, Tata Steel bagged the top position on product, service quality and workplace management.

“Most of the companies that have made it to the top 10 are very visible in the media and have high involvement among large set of stakeholders,” said Ajay Macaden, executive director of Nielsen India. “An increasing focus on ad spends, communicating via technology and innovation have helped consumers spontaneously recall and talk about certain banking and finance sector companies — an improvement from last year,” he added. ITC topped in corporate social responsibility among the 42 companies studied.

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