WPP-owned Kantar Millward Brown unveiled the Top 75 Most Valuable Indian Brands as part of its annual Brand Z report. The methodology of the study involved examining both financial performance and extensive consumer research.

HDFC BankNSE 0.23 % is 2018’s most valuable Indian brand followed by one of the country’s oldest brands, LIC. IT services major TCS took third place. The research firm’s India listing was launched in 2014 and this year, the company extended the list to include 75 brands versus 50 in 2017. Brand Z also introduced B2B companies in the research for the first time.

At an exclusive CEO Roundtable on the sidelines of the launch, moderated by ET Now’s Sonali Krishna, heads of some of the country’s biggest brands debated the “trust deficit” in the country and how brands, large corporations and smaller entities, can fix it. The panellists: Uday Shankar, CEO of Star India; Sandeep Kaul, CEO — tobacco division, ITC Ltd; Anurag Me11111hrotra, MD of Ford India; Sandeep Kohli, executive director — personal care, HUL; David Roth, CEO, The Store – WPP, EMEA and Asia; Eric Salama, CEO of Kantar Global. Said Uday Shankar of Star: “Trust is built bottom up and not top down.” Building trust was critical, especially in a crisis situation since as he observed, “Society is forgiving if you have a sincerity and commitment to change. You can’t weather a storm by being clever or cute.” HUL’s Sandeep Kohli echoes those sentiments: “There has to be a certain logic ethos within a brand. Who you are and hence what you say or do has to be similar. Now, you have a huge opportunity to build greater trust since there are many more ways to speak to consumers in an authentic empathetic way.”