Who paid shareholders the most? TCS.

What the chart shows

In the year to March 2026, TCS paid its shareholders ₹39,437 crore in dividends, the most of the 1,628 listed companies whose yearly accounts show a dividend paid, and ₹18,731 crore more than HDFC Bank.

3 of the ten are software companies. 4 are government companies.

What this is: the cash each company paid out as dividends during the year, from its own accounts (not its group's). It includes last year's final dividend, paid during this year. What it is not: a reason to buy a share. A big dividend total mostly reflects a big company, and it says nothing about what one share pays compared with its price.

How it is measured

A dividend is cash a company pays out of its profit to the people who own its shares. The figure here is "dividends paid" from the cash part of each company's own yearly accounts (its cash flow statement) for the year to March 2026: the cash that actually left the company as dividends during the year. That includes the final dividend for the year before, which is paid after the yearly shareholders' meeting, so it is not the same as the dividends announced for the year.

It is the company's own accounts (standalone), not its group's (consolidated): a group's figure also counts dividends that companies it owns paid to their other shareholders, which is not money paid to the company's own shareholders. Where a year has more than one version on file, the latest is used. 5,331 listed companies filed full-year results for the year; 1,628 show a dividend paid. A zero in these accounts can mean "not reported" as well as "paid nothing", so no count of companies that paid nothing is given.

As a check against reading errors, a company is ranked only when its dividends are no more than 3 times its profit for the year and, where it paid one the year before, between 0.2 and 5 times that figure; 1,478 payers are ranked and 150 are set aside (14 over 3 times profit, 34 under 0.2 times last year, 30 over 5 times last year, 72 with no profit figure). None of the companies not ranked could have made the ten on the evidence we hold for them (the same year's group accounts, else 5 times the year before). 3,508 companies show no dividend in any account we hold (this year, their group's, or last year); 2,723 of them made too little profit to reach the ten under the 3-times-profit rule and 759 own less in total than the 10th amount; 6 bigger ones (Reliance Communications, Meesho, Indus Towers, Adani Power, Vodafone Idea, Indian Overseas Bank) show a zero in every account and are not ranked; 20 (Sanofi Cons Healthc Ind, Foseco India, Huhtamaki India, Schaeffler India, Enkei Wheels (India), Crisil, Rain Industries, Dic India, John Cockerill India, Varun Beverages and others) have no figures for the year at all and cannot be checked. Each coin on the poster is ₹1,000 crore and the top coin of each stack is cut to the exact amount.

A big dividend total mostly reflects a big company. It says nothing about what one share pays compared with its price, and nothing about whether the company is good, cheap or well run.

Using this chart