New Delhi, Nov 11: If you're a collector of extinct items, it's time to begin your search. Less than 8 weeks into the next millenium, and your traditional industrial houses like the Singhanias, the Thapars, the Rama Prasad Goenkas, and most of the Birla clan are all but history. Over the last five years, the market capitalisation, or the value of the shares of the companies on the stock exchange, has declined dramatically, in many cases it's down to a third.Others like the Tatas, with some 45 companies, have just about managed to hang on, but that's really only if you take the market values on October 14, the day the stock exchange peaked at around 5,100. If you compare the value of Tata firms on March 31, 1999, this is Rs 22,345 crore as compared to Rs 32,484 crore five years prior to this. What saves the Tatas from the ignominy of being clubbed as a "wealth destroyer" is the second week of October's boom which took the combined wealth to Rs 31,108 crore. Based on today's valuations, it's likely the Tatas will slip into this category.The same skin-of-their-teeth logic applies to the A V Birla group, whose net worth halved over the five-year period, only to revive to Rs 14,757 crore on October 14. Since few expect the market to revive in a big way over the next few weeks, with the foreign institutional investors continuing to pull out, this puts an automatic ceiling to the value creation of these industrial houses. In other words, the Tatas and the A V Birlas can at best hope to maintain their slender toehold in the "survivors" category they cannot logically hope to become "wealth creators".While the Ambanis manage to stay the number one corporate with their market capitalisation increasing a third over 5 years and just under three-fold if you use October 14 as the benchmark, they're probably one of the few in the traditional multi-product companies to do so well. This is also a result of their ability to continue to grow aggressively, even in a somewhat dull market place.Most other toppers in the wealth-creation slot, expectedly, are the Knowledge Firms. These are the firms, the Wipros and the Infosys' of the world, who are creating wealth not on the basis of ever-expanding economies of scale like the Ambanis, but just on the basis of the brains of their employees So, Wipro's market capitalisation has gone up a stupendous 60 times over the last 5 years and 100 (that's right, one hundred) times on that fateful 14th day of October.This, in fact, is what made Wipro's unassuming chairman Azim Hasham Premji, the country's richest person according to a study of the country's Billionaire Club by the financial daily, Business Standard in August -Premji's wealth, estimated at Rs 17,607 crore by BS, was based on his shareholding in Wipro. In fact, according to Business Standard's analyses a few months ago, 15 of the top 100 people on their billionaire's list, did not own any factories, and manufactured nothing, except ideas that is.Infosys, similarly, has seen its market cap increase from a mere Rs 218 crore on March 31, 1994 to Rs 9,673 crore five years later, and then went up almost three times over the off-now-on-now bull run which ended seven months afterwards. Other infotech firms like HCL saw value rise just under 20 times from Rs 730 crore in 1994 to Rs 13,667 crore in 1999. Other "knowledge" firms, the pharmaceutical ones, such as Ranbaxy and Dr Reddy's, Cipla and Dabur, similarly are the big winners of the last five years.While Rahul Bajaj has managed to claw-on to his position, others like the Ruias haven't been so lucky, and have seen market capitalisation fall by half, if you take the October 14 high on March 31, it had fallen to a third. Raymond's Vijaypat Singhania has also seen the value of his firms fall by a half to Rs 766 crore on October 14, as did Hari Shankar Singhania. Yesterday's rising consumer goods' stars, the Dhoots of Videocon, have seen their company's price fall dramatically from Rs 2,256 crore in March 1994 to Rs 573 crore just 5 years later. The Thapars saw this fall to a fourth in this period, though the stock market boom saw their fortunes revive somewhat market cap on October 14 was Rs 1,486 crore as compared to Rs 3,326 crore on March 31, 1994. Welcome to the new millenium.
