Basking in ignorance

World's largest companies you may not know about

Last year PWC had come out with a report on 100 of the largest companies in the world. Given that they are all worth more than 100B dollars, I was under the impression that I would have at least heard of all of their names. Clearly, I underestimated my ignorance. On the off chance that you share some of that ignorance, I thought I’d touch on 7 interesting companies from the 100 biggest companies in the world, that you probably don’t hear enough about.

1. KWEICHOW MOUTA

Baijiu, also known as shaojiu, is a Chinese colorless liquor. Kweichow Moutai Co is a Chinese company that specializes in the production and sales of the spirit baijiu. They also engage in the production and sale of beverage, food, and packaging material, development of anti-counterfeiting technology, and research and development of relevant information technology products. (Wikipedia)

As of 2021, it is the largest beverage company in the world!

2. TSMC

I heard about TSMC, a couple of years ago when the shortage of semiconductors was being talked about. However, at that time I was unaware of just how big it was. Currently, the Taiwanese semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company is valued at over 500B USD. American Broadcom Inc and Texas Instrument were 2 American semi conductor manafacturers that also made the Top 100.

3. MEITUAN

Thanks to the Zomato IPO, many of us in India may have heard of Meituan. However, the sheer size of the company was baffling. Meituan is the leading online food delivery platform in China. It was founded in 2010 and completed a merger with Dianping in 2015. The company is currently worth over 100B USD.

4. BHP Group

The Broken Hill Proprietary company is an Australian multinational mining, metals, and petroleum public company. Founded in 1885, it is the only Australian company that made the Top 100. (By the way Reliance and TCS were the 2 Indian companies that made the list. )

5. Roche Holding

If you are like me, when thinking about Switzerland you probably think of Roger Federer, chocolates, or their banks. Roche probably doesn’t make the list. However, it is worth noting that the Swiss multinational healthcare company is well worth over 200B Dollars. The company operates worldwide under two divisions: Pharmaceuticals and Diagnostic. Nestle and Novartis were the other 2 companies from Switzerland that made it to the Top 100.

6. Wuliangye Yibin

With companies like Tencent and Alibaba making the Top 10 largest companies in the world, you would associate China with technology, and yet, here is another name on this list from the beverages sector.

Wuliangye is a Chinese baijiu liquor made from proso millet, maize, glutinous rice, long-grain rice, and wheat. Wuliangye Yibin specializes in manufacturing the same.

7. Medtronic

Medtronic is an American-Irish medical device company. The company is best known for its best for its revolutionary cardiac devices, such as battery-powered and miniature pacemakers. The company is worth over 150B dollars as of April 2022.

By the way, I wanted to highlight that close to 14 companies in the top 100 came from China and its regions and so this list could literally have been just that. Maybe that can be another post. That’s it for now though.