In recent years, many publicly traded companies have started using Internet as a new channel to inform current and potential investors about their performance, which has resulted in firm benefits such as enhanced market exposure, increased analyst coverage and institutional following. This paper investigates the extent to which Indian listed companies use the Internet for Investor Relations (IR) purposes. To achieve this goal, a website investigation of the 50 Indian companies listed on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and which constitute a part of S&P CNX Nifty is carried out. The objective of the paper is to identify the stage Indian listed companies are in as regards the Internet usage for disclosing information to their investors. To fulfill the same, the websites of select 50 companies have been extensively studied and analyzed on six broad premises, namely, website content, navigation, usage of multimedia devices, site interactivity, timeliness and regulatory entanglement issues. The results suggest that Indian companies have been able to take only partial advantage of Internet and have badly failed in fulfilling the parameters pertaining to usage of multimedia devices and interactivity.

The last two decades marked remarkable increase in awareness about shareholders’ rights and hence the demand for better corporate governance practices by the listed firms. This is particularly true for board practices and corporate financial disclosures. Shareholders, along with other stakeholders like creditors, clients, suppliers and social agents, want to be better informed and hence require more and more accounting information from the companies.

Corporate communication between company and investors comprises two elements, namely, formal financial reporting and informal voluntary disclosure of corporate information. The formal disclosure is required by law and it includes publishing the annual report. However, the companies have realized the importance of having a good reputation among investors and started to disclose voluntary financial and non-financial information, in addition to those mandatorily contained in the financial statements. Such disclosure requires to be done on a regular basis. In such scenario, the Internet has emerged as the best media for both companies and stakeholders to reach these goals. In this context, company’s communications evolved from its traditional channels to the online Investor Relations (IR) services that provide additional information at a relatively low cost.

This study investigates the use of the Internet for IRs purposes by 50 Indian companies listed on National Stock Exchange (NSE) and which constitute a part of S&P CNX Nifty. S&P CNX Nifty is a well diversified index accounting for 24 sectors of Indian economy.

The objective of the study is to find out if Indian companies use the Internet advantages in communicating with institutional and individual investors. Using the Internet for disclosing financial statements facilitates stakeholders’ access to information and decreases the costs of printing and disseminating the hard copy of financial statements to the interested investors (Popa et al., 2008). Have Indian companies given attention to online IR for improving their investor communication, is the question we try to answer through this paper. In this study, we investigate the IR material on the Internet of selected companies from six perspectives.

Corporate Governance Journal, Corporate Governance Reforms, Financial Disclosures, Indian Companies, Financial Sector Reforms, Globalization, Information Asymmetries, Indian Corporate Morality, Market Mechanism, International Financial Reporting Standards, IFRS, Indian Accounting Standards, Economic Development, Financial Accounting Systems, Corporate Control Mechanisms.