The year 2015-16 was the worst corporate India has seen in the post-liberalisation era in terms of growth in sales revenue. Sales during that year grew at a mere 1.6 per cent, shows data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy ( CMIE ), an independent agency that tracks economic and business data.The data, which collates information for over 21,000 companies, shows that other indicators like profitability and growth in employee compensation during 2015-16 were also among the worst in the last 26 years.The data for the period 1990-91 to 2015-16 shows that there were only six years in which the combined sales of all the companies being tracked grew at single-digit rates and 2015-16 was by far the worst. The growth in corporate sales was just over 3 per cent for 2001-02, the second-lowest in this period.Over these 26 years, there have been five years in which growth in sales revenue crossed 20 per cent, with the 27 per cent recorded in 1994-95 being the highest.Not surprisingly, profitability took a severe beating. In 2015-16, profit after taxes ( PAT ) for 21,588 companies for which CMIE compiled data fell by more than 19 per cent, the third-largest year-on-year decline since 1990-91. The worst was in 2011-12 when profits had shrunk by over 20 per cent. In 2008-09, the year of the global financial crisis, posttax profits had gone down by nearly 20 per cent.What makes the profitability picture even gloomier is that it comes on the heels of really low growth rates in post-tax profit in the previous two years —nearly 4 per cent in 2013-14 and 1.5 per cent in 2014-15. As a result, if one looks at the five-year period from 2011-12 to 2015-16, what emerges is that profits in the last of those years was about 25 per cent lower than in 2010-11.This five-year period stands out as an exception in the entire post-liberalisation era. The years immediately following liberalisation saw extraordinary jumps in corporate profits. In 1993-94 and 1994-95, PAT increased by more than 90 per cent, the highest for this period. Similarly, 2002-03 and 2003-04 saw almost 58 per cent and over 69 per cent increases, respectively, in profits.Given stagnant sales and declining profits, it should come as no surprise that 2015-16 saw one of the lowest increases in total compensation to employees — just above 9 per cent, the lowest since 2010-11. To put that in perspective, even 2009-10, the year following the global financial crisis that witnessed job losses and salary rollbacks, saw a more than 7 per cent increase in employee’s compensation. Stagnant sales and falling profits also explain a continued fall in private investment growth, which started in 2012-13.The CMIE data, mercifully, suggests that there was some respite from this gloomy situation for India Inc with a smaller sample for 2016-17, which covered 7,152 companies, showing an improvement in all these indicators. Sales were up just over 6 per cent, PAT 18 per cent and employee compensation nearly 10 per cent. Whether this trend will hold when data for the full sample of over 21,000 companies becomes available remains to be seen.