Led by India's most valued firm Reliance Industries and PSU major ONGC, all these 48 Indian firms named in the 'Global 2000 List' have a billion-dollar size -- both in terms of turnover and market value. The ranking, topped by British banking behemoth HSBC, has been compiled on the basis of a composite score of sales, profit, assets and market capitalisation.

HSBC is followed by industrial conglomerate General Electric, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and ExxonMobil --all four from the US -- in the top five positions.

Two Indian firms, Mukesh Ambani-promoted RIL and ONGC are among the top 200 companies at 193rd and 198th ranks. Earlier in March, Forbes had released its list of world's richest billionaires that included 53 Indian businessmen, with four of them -- Lakshmi Mittal, Mukesh Ambani, Anil Ambani and KP Singh -- figuring among the world's ten wealthiest.

RIL and ONGC are followed by two PSU majors State Bank of India (219th) and Indian Oil (303rd), the country's biggest private sector lender ICICI Bank (374th) and state-run power generation major NTPC (411th).

The Indian presence is almost evenly divided among the private and state-run companies.

While none of the Indian companies have managed to find a place among top 100, it has two firms run by people of Indian origin. Vikram Pandit-run banking giant Citigroup and Lakshmi Mittal-headed steel behemoth ArcelorMittal are at 24th and 38th positions respectively. Indra Nooyi-run beverage major PepsiCo has been ranked at 131st position.

Other Indian companies on the list include SAIL (647th) and Tata Steel (738th), telecom giants Bharti Airtel (826th) and Reliance Communications (846th), software major TCS (927), housing finance giant HDFC (949th), engineering heavyweight Larsen and Toubro (961st) and state-run oil firm BPCL (967th).

While Mukesh Ambani-led RIL has topped the list of Indian companies, there are also three firms belonging to the group led by his estranged younger brother Anil Ambani – Reliance Comm, Reliance Power (1,597th) and Reliance Capital (1919th).

According to Forbes, the Global 2000 companies have a combined revenue of 30 trillion dollars, 2.4 trillion dollars of profit, 119 trillion dollars in assets and 39 trillion dollars in market capitalisation. Besides, these companies employ 72 million people across the world.

While the list is still dominated by the US companies, the number of American firms has dropped by 61 from previous year and 153 from 2004. "In contrast, China, India and Brazil are rapidly adding companies to the list. India, for example, has 48 companies this year versus 27 in 2004," report said.

In terms of sectors, banking has the largest presence with 315 firms in the global list. Even among the Indian companies, one-third or 16 of them belong to this sector.

Other Indian companies include BHEL (1012), Infosys (1040), HDFC Bank (1093), Wipro (1102), Tata Motors (1111), HPCL (1112), NMDC (1134), ITC (1159), PNB (1166), DLF (1185), Hindalco (1205), GAIL (1249), Canara Bank (1305), Axis Bank