Mumbai, June 27: Eleven Indian companies have found a place in a Standard & Poor’s (S&P) index for Muslim investors.

The Pan Asia Shariah Index was launched by the rating agency today. In compiling the index, S&P did not consider entities whose activities were non-compliant with the Shariah. The other criterion was financial parameters.

The Indian companies in the list are Bhel, Bharti Airtel, Hindustan Unilever, Infosys, NTPC, ONGC, Reliance Communications, Reliance Industries, Satyam Computer Services, Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro. They are all sensex scrips.

Companies from 10 emerging markets are in this index.

Alka Banerjee, vice-president of Standard & Poor’s Index Services, said the new index “builds upon the success of our other indices launched during the past six months as part of the S&P Global Shariah Index Series”.

“S&P’s approach is to create meaningful, product-based indices that give Islamic investors exposure to the same headline markets that conventional investors have enjoyed for years,” she said.

New Shariah-complaint mutual funds are using the indices to compile their portfolios, Banerjee said.

For building the index, S&P restricted itself to top 15 stocks in an Asian country with a market capitalisation of at least $1 billion.

There are 71 companies in the S&P Pan Asia Shariah Index, having a market capitalisation of $810.83 billion. Information technology companies make up approximately 35 per cent of the index, followed by telecom (17 per cent) and energy (15 per cent).