Exports of 10 top IT firms crosses $15 bn

New Delhi, July 1: India's IT software and services exports from top 10 companies crossed the 15 billion dollars mark touching Rs 68,236 crore during 2006-07, according to an industry survey and analysis.

Of these, the top three firms- Tata Consultancy Services(TCS), Infosys and Wipro- earned about Rs 39,260 crore, Dataquest (DQ) said. The next four slots were taken up by Satyam (Rs 5,789 crore), IBM (Rs 4,880 crore ), HCL Technologies (Rs 4,598 crore) and Cognizant (Rs 4,584 crore), it added.

The software and services exports of India development centres of three foreign multinationals - IBM, Cognizant and Oracle- added up to Rs 13,127 crore, the survey said, adding Oracle's revenues included that of I-flex following its integration.

Oracle and Tech Mahindra stormed into the DQ top 10 at number eight and nine with revenues of Rs 3,663 crore and Rs 2,890 crore respectively. Patni Computers slipped two positions to number 10 with revenues of Rs 2,573 crore.

Dataquest said all figures are IT services exports only. They exclude BPO revenues and any domestic services revenues.

However, the growth story of top compnaies varied from as high as 135 per cent (Tech Mahindra) to as low as 23 per cent(Patni), the analayis said.

''Almost all companies saw their share of revenues from Europe grow significantly in FY-07,'' Chief Editor of Dataquest Prasanto K Roy said.

'' Apart from being a faster growing market for offshoring, the weakening dollar too has forced the software majors to de-risk by looking outside the US; and Europe is the next big market,'' he added.

On the impact of weakening dollar on the revenues, Dataquest Analyst and Executive Editor Shyamanuja Das said, ''The weakening dollar and stronger rupee wasn't really felt by exporters until the later half of 2006-07. Contrary to popular perception, the average value of the dollar in rupees was higher in 2006-07 than in 2005-06.'' '' It is only during the January-March '07 quarter that decline accelerated, and in April-June '07, declined further and rapidly to the Rs 40 level. This will really hit exporters hard this year,'' he added.

The study said acquisition to acquire skill has become the common strategy for Indian IT services providers to strengthen capability and ensure future growth. No one has yet invested in a big merger for acquiring scale, the grapevine about Infosys bidding for CapGemini notwithstanding.

IBM, with close to 55,000 people today, is next only to the top three Indian IT companies in terms of manpower. CEO of IBM Sam Palmisano said hiring in India will continue as IBM propose to invest six billion dollars over the next three years.

UNI