According to research conducted by Rita Gunther McGrath, a professor at Columbia Business School, published in the Harvard Business Review (HBR), only 10 companies out of 2,347 with market capitalisations of over $1 billion, grew their net income by 5 per cent in all 10 years and only five grew both revenues and net income every year.

Even as managements make claims of high double-digit growth, the research shows that only a handful of them can generate decent single-digit growth on a consistent basis.

Other than Infosys and HDFC Bank, the list includes Yahoo Japan, ACS (Spain), Cognizant (US), Tsingtao Brewery (China), Indra Sistemas (Spain), Krka Group (Slovenia), Factsheet Research Systems (US), Atmos Energy (US) have been named as highly performing organisations that deliver consistent results in the face of volatility.

Market experts however take it with a caution and say that these ten companies may be lucky.

"There are too many factors that companies have to fight with and it does not mean that the management of those who have not made it to the list are bad as their are lot of factors that are beyond their control," said Parag Parikh an investment advisor.

According to the research, the 10 companies that are growth outliers have several traits in common. While they are more stable and more innovative than their competitors, they tend to defy certain conventional beliefs that growth rate is not determined by notions such as high growth industry; sustained growth having inverse relation with size; globalisation being the key and higher growth rate in fast growing markets, etc.

"The growth outliers do a tremendous amount of experimentation and innovation. They develop and deploy new technologies, move into new markets, explore new business models and even open up new industries. They take on acquisitions and aggressively seek input from people and organisations quite unlike their own. They rapidly adjust and readjust their resources and are comfortable moving executives and other employees from one role to another," said the report "How the Growth Outliers Do It" by McGrath.

Some other things that they follow include — focus management attention on culture, avoid dramatic divestitures, hold on to their talent, don't change high level strategies and also keep their senior leadership stable.