Doing good annual reports is a science. It is not about showing miles of assembly lines at factories, smiling faces in conference rooms or sun soaked glass buildings. Nor is it about outdoing your conventional competition by using some clever copy. Because when it comes to stock markets & investors, they do not necessarily compare you to the competition in your own domain of products or services. You are actually compared to any other listed company that has similar share prices or similar growth pattern.

Annual reports have to be honest portrayals of the performance from past year and an earnest projection of future plans for growth. Pictures, words & figures in annual reports have to be realistic and devoid of overstatements or jargons. Every word, chart or picture must have a reason to be there and they must be the most appropriate expressions to convey the message.

Shareholders want to know what is happening & what next, analysts want to know how stable the company is, where & how it plans to move forward, employees want to know about the future plans and their exact position in the value chain. So the message really needs to convey multiple things to multiple interests with a single focus.

Before beginning any annual report exercise, we understand all the highlights of the year that was, we also soak ourselves in the messages to be conveyed.

At Elephant, we learnt all these nuances from the best in class clients. The list reads some of the best performing Indian companies. We have done reports for Bajaj Auto, Bilcare, CII, Panacea Biotec, Praj, Reliance, & so on…