NEW DELHI: The Superbrands Council comprising eminent professionals from the corporate world has recently listed Exide among the top brands in India.

According to an official statement, Exide was selected out of 711 leading Indian brands across 98 categories. Exide will be featured in the Superbrands volume as being one of the strongest brands in India.

In an official statement, Exide Industries Limited chairman S.B. Ganguly said, "The Superbrands status for Exide clearly reflects the brand identity, its value and its association with the consumers in India. On this occasion, we wish to reiterate once again our commitment to provide world class batteries and associated services to all our customers."

Considered to be the Oscars of branding, the Superbrand status is conferred after exhaustive research in each category. The research aims to identify those brands in each category, which offer significant emotional and/or physical advantages over its competitors, which customers want, recognise and are willing to pay a premium for.

The Superbrand Council, composed of doyens of business, industry, advertising, marketing and media - then reviews each of these brands and pronounce judgment.

As is apparent, the entire process circumvents any ranking by market shares but focuses on the more permanent but harder to achieve criteria of brand image and perception. Hence the brands' mind dominance; goodwill, consumer loyalty, trust and emotional bonding are the factors, which influenced the selection.

Participation is strictly by invitation. If the Council has not
selected a brand (and there were only 134 selected in all), a brand just cannot participate. Hence Superbrands has proved to be extremely aspirational in every country it exists.

Superbrands is a concept that started 10 years ago in the UK to chronicle case studies of exceptional brands. It now has a presence in 26 countries including USA, Australia, Denmark, France, Italy, Spain and Singapore and now in India.