Anil Ambani Group company Reliance Communications has lost its position in the elite club of country's top 10 most valued firms amid meltdown in the stock market following the global financial turmoil.

Engineering and construction major Larsen & Toubro moved ahead of RCom to enter the list of top 10 firms with a market capitalisation of Rs 77,375.03 crore, while the ADA Group firm has a valuation of Rs 77,204 crore as on the week ended September 19.

RCom suffered a fall of Rs 3,529.47 crore in its market capitalisation in the past five trading sessions and is at the 11th place in terms of market value.

Reliance Industries has maintained its position as the country's most valued firm, with an increase of Rs 17,510.41 crore in its marketcap, which stood at Rs 2.98 lakh crore last week. Public sector ONGC, country's second most valued firm, recorded the second biggest gain of Rs 10,544.63 crore, while PSU power utility NTPC saw a jump of Rs 7,627.05 crore in its market cap.

Leading telecom firm Bharti Airtel gained Rs 3,872.12 crore in the same period,
while country's largest lender SBI gained Rs 3,320.42 crore. BHEL increased Rs 682.88 crore in its valuation.

State-run NMDC bore the brunt of the meltdown on the bourses facing maximum loss of Rs 24,224.32 crore in its market capitalisation thereby sliding to the eighth position on Friday from sixth place in the previous week.

The valuation of another PSU MMTC also declined by as much as Rs 5,328.50 crore, while IT major Infosys saw its marketcap sinking by Rs 1,158.99 crore.

Meanwhile, the country's top 10 firms, in terms of market capitalisation, gained Rs 9,486.59 crore from its total in the previous week.

At the end of Friday's trade, the total market value of the 10 most valued firms, comprising six public sector firms and four private sector entities, stood at about Rs 13.78 lakh crore, up from Rs 13.69 lakh crore a week ago.

RIL (2.98 lakh crore) tops the list, followed by ONGC (Rs 2.29 lakh crore), Bharti Airtel (Rs 1.51 lakh crore), NTPC (Rs 1.50 lakh crore), MMTC (Rs 1.08 lakh crore), SBI (Rs 99,333 crore), Infosys (Rs 92,939 crore), NMDC (Rs 86,430 crore), BHEL (Rs 83,742 crore) and L&T (Rs 77,375 crore).

The quest for executional excellence is driving India Inc to make HR its next overhaul destination. No wonder then, the elite of India Inc is placing their ace honchos from line management into HR functions hoping they would herald new rules of engaging the employees.

So when Infosys ex-CFO, TA Mohandas Pai shifted to head the IT major’s HR functions, it didn’t come as a surprise. Earlier, Pari Sadasivan had made a similar non-linear move taking over as V-P, HR, at India after 20 years of long career in operations. Her last stint was head of global delivery, China.

Last year, Rajiv Dube, CEO, Rallis India, moved to Mahindra & Mahindra as head of HR; Shrikant Gupte, ex-CEO, Modi Lotteries, and ex-head of personal care in Marico, joined as group head of HR at Nicholas Piramal.

Similarly, G Krishnamurthy was a executive in L&T before joining as EVP, HR, in the same company, and Mumbai based BPO company’s Ramesh Samtani was operations director before heading HR. Today, HR head in a company need not be a specialist.

Instead, he could be an in-house talent from line function, such as finance, sales or marketing. “Having a perspective on the clients and the units helps in reorienting the HR needs within the organisation and aligning them towards the external constituency,” says Ms Sadasivan of IBM.

In the knowledge Industry where people are the biggest for the company, HR has a direct bearing on the results as it is the single biggest recurring cost. Companies increasingly want to bring in a sharp business focus to control their operating margins.

“A line guy will understand more of what a business demands of HR, and then he can implement the business discipline better,” says R Suresh, MD, Stanton Chase.

The thinking within the industry only goes to show how HR is becoming central to businesses now. “Ask any CEO what keeps him awake these days, and it’s all HR issues. Hence, executives in line management too see an opportunity in senior HR positions,” says Sanjay Kapoor, country manager, Russel Reynolds.

Today, companies differentiate between HR operations and HR strategy. While the transactional aspect of HR is being handled by the traditional HR guys, the strategic part is being given a business dimension by introduction of people from non-HR streams.

“While business management skills are applied to streamlining the HR operations, the combination of domain expertise on HR issues and business perspective that an outsider brings in, makes it unique and powerful combination,” explains Ms Sadasivan.

In the past companies, we had a few examples but it is only now that the trend has acquired critical mass. Take HLL, for example, which has had HR directors on its board and most of them have been line managers who did not have HR background.

L&T has also had tradition of line managers taking on HR responsibilities. Marico’s previous head of HR, Rakesh Pandey too came from operations background. He served a 4-6 year stint as HR Leader and is now back to an operating role of leading their new business Kaya Skin clinics.

TTSL-Virgin customers can now call any number, mobile or landline, across networks at only 50 paise per minute after the initial three minutes of the day.  The first three minutes of a STD call each day would cost Rs 1.50 paise per minute while for rest of the day the long distance tariff would drop to just 50 paise per minute for maximum up to 30 minutes.

Similarly, for local calls, for first three minutes of the day calls would be at Re 1 per minute, then for the rest of the day the tariff would be 50 paise a minute.

"Against the industry norm of STD tariff of Re one per minute at an additional monthly commitment, new 50 Paise STD- local will provide the lowest all-India STD base tariff offer with no extra cost," Virgin Mobile India CEO M A Madhusudan said.