IT exports grow 29% in FY08 despite rupee surge

New Delhi, Jul 28 (UNI) Unfazed by nine per cent rupee surge, India's top 20 IT exporters posted a robust growth of 29 per cent in 2007-08, a study says.

It is not for nothing that India is trying hard to pry open rich services markets of developed nations at the ongoing WTO ministerial in Geneva.

Overall growth of IT companies, a majority of them services exporters, also posted a healthy 24 per cent growth, according to Dataquest.

Top 20 domestic IT players recorded a 27 per cent growth, down four per cent from 31 per cent registered in FY07, it adds.

Appreciation of rupee against U S dollar last year, however, adversely impacted the fortunes of many IT companies.

After three years of strong growth, the percentage growth of 20 IT exporter-companies fell to 29 in FY08, a sharp decline from 45 in FY07, while overall growth for top 20 firms also dropped significantly to 24 per cent from 41 per cent in the two comparable years, the IT magazine says.

In the Dataquest listing of the Top 20 IT companies from India, the top seven positions remained unchanged, with TCS, Wipro, Infosys, HP India, IBM India, Ingram Micro and Satyam Computer Services retaining their positions from number one to seven.

Three non-Indian entities --- Accenture, SAP and Dell -- replaced three Indian firms -- Teledata, Patni and Moser Baer in the top 20 club of IT companies in FY08.

While Accenture acquired the 15th position, SAP moved up six places to 18th place, according to the DQ.

The Dataquest Top 200 annual survey reveals that services exports firms make up 95 of the top 200 companies in India in FY08, up from 86 in the previous fiscal.

Despite 2007-08 being a challenging year for Indian IT companies on account of the rupee surge, the 29 per cent export growth speaks volumes about their robustness, domain expertise and maturity, the study adds.

Though the number of companies with negative growth jumped up from just three in FY07 to 14 in FY08, the number of firms which recorded three-digit growth also leaped from seven in previous year to 13 in 2007-08, the data reveals.

Most of the fastest growing companies in FY08 were specialised firms. Financial Technologies grew over 674 per cent with software products for financial market; Bartronics' specialisation in bar coding solutions got it 321 per cent revenue jump; Prime Focus business went up 257 per cent because of its focus on software for films and entertainment; and KLG Systel topline shot up by 122 per cent because of its focus on products and solutions for the utility sector.

Of the top 20 IT companies that did maximum business in Indian domestic market, 16 were non-Indian firms. They included HP (Rs 12,672 crore), Ingram Micro (Rs 8,620 crore), Cisco Systems (Rs 5,370 crore), IBM (Rs 4,275 crore), Intel (Rs 3,879 crore), Dell (Rs 3,200 crore), Lenovo (Rs 3,014 crore), Microsoft (Rs 2,937 crore), SAP (Rs 2,575 crore), APC (Rs 2,410 crore), Samsung (Rs 1,804 crore), Acer (Rs 1,749 crore), Oracle (Rs 1,504 crore), Sun Microsystems (Rs 1,456 crore), eSys (Rs 1,342 crore) and Seagate (Rs 1,143 crore), according to Dataquest.

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