Why the Tata Group fared the worst among giants in 2025

Summary: This deep dive breaks down where the Tata Group lost ground in 2025, which businesses dragged the most, and why some parts of the empire still offer resilience. 2025 was another muted year for Indian equities. The benchmark Sensex managed a modest 9 per cent gain, more or less similar to that of the year before. However, performance diverged sharply across sectors, and even more starkly across India’s largest corporate groups. Among the country’s biggest conglomerates—companies that collectively shape market direction, investor sentiment and index movements—some groups extended their dominance with strong gains, while others faltered despite their size and pedigree. Most striking of all was the underperformance of the Tata Group. Among India’s 10 largest business houses by market capitalisation, the Tata Group ended the year at the bottom of the leaderboard. According to data compiled by Mint, the top 10 accounted for nearly 24 per cent of India’s Rs 474 lakh crore market capitalisation as of December 26, 2025, broadly unchanged from the previous year. But within that stability lay a sharp reshuffling of fortunes. At one end, the Aditya Birla Group topped the table with a 26.2 per cent rise in combined market value, followed by the Bajaj Group (25.5 per cent) and Reliance Industries (24 per cent). At the other end sat the Tata Group, whose aggregate market capitalisation fell 15 per cent over the year, making it the weakest performer among India’s corporate heavyweights. The Godrej Group was the second worst with an 8 per cent decline, the report showed. The big culprit The biggest drag on the Tata Group’s performance likely came from its crown jewel: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). Accounting for roughly 44 per cent of the group’s total market capitalisation, TCS alone fell 22 per cent in 2025—its worst yearly performance since 2008’s global financial crisis when the stock plunged 56 per cent, according to Moneycontrol. A prolonged slowdown in global technology spending, especially among large US and European clients, kept revenue growth muted. Discretionary IT budgets were slashed as global enterprises delayed digital tran