India, Oct. 22 -- Back in the late 1980s, when I was a young journalist, the media was busy discussing the monumental impact of Rajiv Gandhi's initiatives to ease imports, and allow joint ventures with foreign firms. But as a business journalist, I and my colleagues had another preoccupation. For us, the paramount question was which Indian company will cross the Rs 1,000-crore annual revenue milestone? There were many contenders such as Reliance Industries, Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL), and Maruti Suzuki. This was a few years before the real reforms were undertaken in early 1991.

Today, Reliance Industries clocked an annual turnover of more than Rs Rs 10,00,000 crore, or thousand times the earlier milestone, in 2024-25. In 2024 (c...