New Delhi: A majority of the country's top blue-chip firms, led by giants like Reliance Industries and TCS have seen their investor base shrink in the past one year, largely due to a decline in the number of small shareholders.

The firms whose total number of shareholders has declined since September 2011 also include ITC, Infosys, ONGC, Maruti Suzuki, Bajaj Auto, Wipro, Coal India, HUL, NTPC, Sun Pharma, Cipla, Tata SteelB, HDFC and HDFC Bank.

Also, small investors (defined as those holding shares worth up to 1 lakh) account for the largest chunk of decline in the shareholder base of these companies.

In case of RIL, whose shareholder base has declined the maximum by 1.72 lakh, the number of small investors has fallen by 1.69 lakh.

Small investors account for over 95 per cent of the decline in shareholder base for most of these companies.

As per an analysis of changes in number of shareholders for the 30 companies forming part of BSE benchmark Sensex, as many as 16 firms have seen the total number of their shareholders decline since September 2011.

Besides, the number of shareholders could have increased in case of at least two companies, Tata Power and Bhel, on account of their respective stock splits, which result into an increased liquidity of such shares in the market.

Others whose number of shareholders has increased during this period include ICICI Bank, SBI, Bharti Airtel, Jindal Steel & Power, Hindalco, L&T, Sterlite Industries, Tata Motors, M&M, Hero MotoCorp, GAIL and Dr Reddy's Labs.

For these firms also, it is small investors that account for most of the increase in the number of shareholders.

While small investors account for a large number of shareholders in the listed companies, their holdings are very minimal.

The government and the market regulator Sebi have been taking various steps to attract small investors to the market.

However, experts say that volatile market conditions might have led to the exit of many small investors from the market.