How Emerging Market Multinationals Are Reshaping Global Business
Lourdes Casanova
Senior Lecturer, Director
Anne Miroux
Faculty Fellow
Cañizares Center for Emerging Markets
Cornell University
The rise of multinational corporations from emerging markets is one of the defining economic stories of the twenty-first century — and one that lies at the heart of what the BRICS project has always been about. When Jim O’Neill coined the BRIC acronym in 2001, he was doing more than grouping four fast-growing economies: he was signaling a fundamental shift in where global economic dynamism was headed. Twenty-five years later, that shift has materialized in the boardroom as much as in the macroeconomic data. The firms headquartered in Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa have grown into genuine global players, reshaping industries, challenging incumbents, and rewriting the rules of international competition.
Led by Chinese firms, these corporations now account for roughly a third of the Fortune Global 500. But what has changed is not merely size, but competitive substance: the capacity to innovate, to set technological standards, and to compete against long-established Western rivals on their own terms.
In the Cornell University’s Cañizares Center for Emerging Markets’s annual report, now in its tenth edition, we track this transformation in depth. Its 2025 theme New Rules, New Opportunities captures the moment we are in: one in which the frameworks and assumptions that governed global business for most of the twentieth century are being challenged.
From Periphery to Centre Stage
For most of the twentieth century, the case studies taught in business schools told a remarkably successful story: mainly American, but also European, and Japanese corporations dominated international trade, set industry standards, controlled global value chains, and shaped prevailing theories of management and strategy. Companies from the developing world occupied a limited role as raw material suppliers, low-cost manufacturers, and regional champions with modest global ambitions.
That picture has changed. Beginning in earnest after the turn of the millennium and accelerating through the global financial crisis of 2008, a new generation of multinationals with state backing emerged. Headquartered in China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, Turkey, and across Southeast Asia, what distinguished this new wave was its adaptability. Some firms leveraged cost and operational advantages; others developed business models tailored to the specific constraints of emerging markets: large populations, infrastructure gaps, leapfrogging consumers, that turned out to be portable to other developing economies. Over time, many moved decisively up the value chain, investing in research and development, world-class talent and, more recently, in global brands like the Brazilian flip flops Havaianas or the Chinese social platform ByteDance (Tiktok).
The story of twenty-first century globalization is therefore a profound redistribution of corporate power from the traditional centers of the developed world to a more multipolar, increasingly emerging-market-driven global economy.
The Chinese Vanguard
No country has driven this transformation more forcefully than China. In two decades, Chinese companies have moved to a position at the forefront of global business. As of 2024, 128 Chinese firms appear on the Fortune Global 500, up from just 29 in 2008, with state-owned giants such as the electricity company State Grid, the bank ICBC, and the oil company CNOOC sitting alongside private-sector champions like Huawei, Alibaba, and Lenovo.
The internationalization of Chinese firms was supported by the ‘Go Global’ policies. Chinese companies accumulated capital, technological capabilities, and managerial expertise, they looked abroad for natural resources, knowledge and growth. The Belt and Road Initiative, launched in 2013, provided both the infrastructure and the political architecture for Chinese firms to establish themselves across Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and parts of Europe. This process has also deepened China’s engagement with fellow BRICS members and partner economies in ways that go well beyond diplomatic symbolism.
In many emerging markets, Chinese firms have become central actors in local economies: building infrastructure, providing financing, deploying digital platforms, and gradually setting the technological and operational standards to which others must adapt. China is participating in globalization through its firms, and helping redefine it.
Beyond China: A Broader BRICS+ Story
Yet the rise of emerging-market multinationals extends far beyond China, and this is where the BRICS+ lens becomes valuable. Each of the grouping’s core economies has produced globally competitive firms that embody the broader shift in corporate power.
India’s information technology companies such as Infosys, Wipro, and Tata Consultancy Services have transformed the global technology services industry, capturing significant market share from established Western firms. Infosys alone recorded $18.6 billion in revenues in FY2024, while the number of India’s high-value global brands has grown from 8 to 15 over the past decade. Indian conglomerates such as the Tata Group have expanded internationally through landmark acquisitions. The purchase of Jaguar Land Rover remains one of the most emblematic examples of an emerging-market firm acquiring and revitalizing a prestigious Western brand.
Brazil’s Embraer, the world’s third-largest commercial aircraft manufacturer, has become a technological leader in regional aviation. JBS has grown into one of the world’s largest food processors through operational excellence and global acquisitions. South Africa has produced global champions in financial services and resources. In 2001 South African conglomerate Naspers bought a 46% stake in Tencent for just $30 million, and the rest is history. Ethiopian and Turkish Airlines are other examples of airlines connecting emerging markets and more.
South Korea’s trajectory, from developing economy to advanced industrial power through the international success of Samsung, Hyundai, or LG, offers both a precedent and a roadmap. Their experience illustrates how globally competitive firms can drive a country’s broader development trajectory – a lesson that has not been lost on policymakers across the BRICS+ economies.
Brand Finance’s 2025 analysis underscores the trend: emerging-market firms are rapidly closing the brand-value gap with their Western counterparts, and the trajectory points firmly in one direction.
Competing on Innovation, Not Just Cost
The rise of emerging-market multinationals was built on cheap labor and state subsidies. But sustained economic growth that provided scale, rising technological and innovation capabilities, and deepening economic integration among developing economies also played a key role. That’s the dynamic that the BRICS framework has accelerated.
Huawei’s dominance in next-generation telecoms infrastructure is the most widely discussed example. Despite sustained geopolitical headwinds, the company’s technological capabilities are broadly acknowledged across the industry. In the first half of 2025, Huawei held a 31% share of the global telecoms equipment market, more than double the combined share of Ericsson and Nokia. In September 2025, Gartner recognised Huawei as a Leader in its 5G RAN Infrastructure Solutions Magic Quadrant for the fifth consecutive year.
In electric vehicles, the story is equally striking. In 2025, BYD overtook Tesla to become the world’s largest seller of battery electric vehicles, delivering 2.26 million units against Tesla’s 1.64 million. The result proved wrong Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, when ten years ago, he defined BYD as a non-competitor. Today, six of the world’s top ten EV sellers are now Chinese brands, with Chinese automakers controlling roughly 70% of global EV production.
Innovation is visible in financial services as well, and here the BRICS economies have led the world. Kenya’s M-Pesa pioneered mobile money and transformed financial inclusion across Africa. Launched in 2021, Brazil’s PIX system revolutionized instant payments and became one of the world’s most successful public digital payment infrastructures. India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has processed billions of transactions while reducing its cost. And China’s Alipay and WeChat Pay created one of the world’s most advanced cashless payment ecosystems. In each case, the innovation originated in an emerging market, responding to the specific needs of its users and promoting financial inclusion.
Implications for Western Corporations and Governments
For established multinationals headquartered in North America, Europe, and Japan, the rise of emerging-market competitors represents a strategic challenge to their dominant positions enjoyed in global markets, technological leadership, strong brands, and privileged access to capital. Today, that competitive moat is being eroded.
The response from Western corporations has been varied. Some have sought collaboration. The automotive industry provides several examples: Mercedes-Benz’s partnership with China’s Geely, and the many joint ventures involving Western, Chinese, and Indian firms seeking to accelerate the transition to electric and connected vehicles.
Others, like Apple’s iPhone have maintained their premium market segments, relying on brand strength and regulatory complexity as barriers to entry. This strategy is clear in luxury goods, aerospace, or pharmaceuticals.
Governments, meanwhile, have become far more active participants in shaping the competitive environment. In January 2025, the European Commission urged Member States to screen outbound investments in strategic sectors including semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and quantum technologies — complementing the US Outbound Investment Security Program that entered into force the same month. By the end of 2024, 24 EU Member States had national FDI screening legislation in place, with more than 3,000 investment filings reviewed during the year.
The challenge for Western firms is therefore broader than managing a new set of competitors. It involves adapting to a multipolar global economy in which success will require technological excellence, and the ability to navigate a business environment shaped by shifting geopolitical alliances, new centers of economic dynamism, and competitors that play by a different and sometimes more demanding set of rules.
The Age of the Emerging Market Multinationals
The rise of emerging-market multinationals reflects a structural transformation of the global economy: the redistribution of capital, technology, talent, and economic dynamism. The corporations that have emerged from this shift are no longer peripheral participants in global markets.
Their success has challenged some of the most enduring assumptions in international business. For decades, multinational enterprise was conceived as a one-directional process: firms from advanced economies expanding into developing markets. Today, the flows are multidirectional. Companies headquartered in Beijing, Mumbai, São Paulo, Johannesburg or Jakarta, are investing abroad, acquiring global brands, building technological leadership, and competing with long-established Western rivals.
The rise of these firms may reinforce a broader rebalancing of global economic power. As BRICS+ economies account for a growing share of global output, consumption, and innovation, their firms are becoming influential in shaping the future of globalization. Whether in digital payments, renewable energy, telecommunications, infrastructure, electric vehicles, or artificial intelligence, innovations that will define the coming decades will originate not only in Silicon Valley, Tokyo, or Frankfurt, but in Shanghai, Bangalore, São Paulo, Nairobi, and Riyadh.
This launch of the BRIC acronym was as an observation of where human capability, ambition, and economic energy were concentrating. The multinational corporations of the emerging world are perhaps the most tangible expression of that thesis, writ large across the global economy.
For business leaders, policymakers, and scholars seeking to understand the world economy of the twenty-first century, grappling with this transformation is no longer optional. The old maps of global business — dividing the world into innovators and followers, headquarters and peripheries, developed and developing — are becoming obsolete.
We have entered the age of the emerging-market multinational. Understanding their rise is essential to understanding the future of global competition, innovation, and economic power. The defining business story of the twenty-first century may be the globalization of firms from the emerging world.
