Tata Steel has topped a list of India’s 50 most admired companies, while four other companies from the steel-to-software conglomerate Tata group have also made to the first such rankings.

However, the first such list for India, compiled by business magazine Fortune and global management consultancy Hay Group, has nearly half of the total 50 positions being occupied by the Indian units of the foreign companies.

Tata Steel is followed by Hindustan Unilever, Colgate Palmolive and Cadbury India (all of which are Indian ventures of different foreign companies) in the second, third and fourth positions, while Tata group’s TCS has occupied the fifth place.

The other Tata group firms on the list include Tata Motors (6th), Titan Industries (39th) and Tata Tech (44th).The companies in the top-ten include ITC (7th), L&T (8th), IBM India (9th) and Dell India (10th).

While 24 places on the list are occupied by the Indian ventures of foreign companies, there are eight public sector entities, including ONGC (16th), Bharat Petroleum (17th), Indian Oil (19th) and Hindustan Petroleum (20th).

Other PSUs on the list include ONGC Videsh, SAIL, Gail India and NTPC, while the Indian ventures of foreign giants like GSK, HP, Microsoft, Mercedez Benz, J&J, Nestle, Intel, SAP, Toyota, Phillips Electronics, Cisco Systems, Samsung, Coca-Cola, Siemens and Oracle have also made to the rankings.

The list has been prepared on the basis of a survey of 507 executives across 291 companies that was carried out from October 2011 to January 2012.

Various factors including corporate governance, financial soundness, leadership, talent management and corporate social responsibility were taken into consideration for the rankings.

To compile the list, 15 industries were selected on the basis of various factors including size, contribution to national GDP, growth rate and national presence.