From the Editor

What is neither big nor small, low on risk of failure yet high on growth potential, full of start-up type energy and yet not lacking in big business type rigour? We didn't know the answer to this puzzle either when we set out to research for this issue's cover story several months ago.

But slowly and steadily a class of entrepreneurs and their businesses started to emerge that fits this description. A class that has been less celebrated than the start-ups or the big business houses. And yet it is a class that, in many ways, combines the key strengths of both the beginners and the big daddies of Indian business.

You can call them India Inc.'s middle class - it's as vibrant and promising as the country's middle class consumers. So, why does our cover dub them as "hidden leaders"? They are hidden not because you wouldn't have heard of them. They are hidden because even if you have heard of them, you may not have known the extent of their success - either in carving out a profitable niche or transforming an existing business.

In doing so, most of them have also become leaders in their space. It's not as if the middle rung hasn't existed in Indian business before. What sets the 25 entrepreneurs in our list (and many more who we couldn't have possibly reached out to) apart is that unlike the middle rung of the past that mostly survived because of government protection, these folks have thrived in an open and fiercely competitive market. It is this spirit of entrepreneurship that we have tried to capture in our cover package.

In identifying and celebrating the mid-level companies, BT's annual listings now cover the entire spectrum of Indian industry; we have had the very popular listing of India's hottest start-ups and the seminal BT500 for several years now. But even outside these three listings, expect more from our series on Gen Next entrepreneurs that we kick off from this issue.

It's more than just entrepreneurship that has made Naveen Jindal's JSPL (Jindal Steel & Power Ltd) India's most profitable private power producer. Last year, its return on equity from power business was highest in the world.

We also explain how it was achieved and whether it can be sustained. Something unusual is going on in the IPO market. Public issues that are getting heavily oversubscribed are listing at near or below their offer price. Then, we unravel this high-demand-but-low-price phenomenon. And on other mysteries like why sound waves are used to distinguish water from oil and where is the world's longest heated (to 65C) pipeline being built, look no further.