The top three - TCS, Infosys and Wipro - earned about $8.7 billon (Rs 39,260 crore), according to an industry survey and analysis by Dataquest. The next four slots have been taken up by Satyam (Rs 5,789 crore or Rs 57.89 billion)), IBM (Rs 4,880 crore or Rs 48.80 billion), HCL Technologies (Rs 4,598 crore or Rs 45.98 billion) and Cognizant (Rs 4,584 crore or Rs 45.84 billion).
With this line, there is no change in the rankings of the top seven of the top-10 software firms.
Seven of the DQ Top-10 software firms are Indian multinationals. The software and services exports of India development centres of foreign multinationals, which made it to the top 10 IBM, Cognizant and Oracle added up to Rs 13,127 crore (Rs 131.27 billion).
The revenues of Oracle include those of i-flex post-integration during the year. Oracle and Tech Mahindra stormed into the DQ Top 10 at No 8 and No 9 with revenues of Rs 3,663 crore and Rs 2,890 crore (Rs 36.63 billion and Rs 28.90 billion) respectively. Patni Computers slipped two positions to 10 with revenues of Rs 2,573 crore (Rs 25.73 billion).
Interestingly, even in the top 10, the growth is not consistent. It varies from as high as 135 per cent (Tech Mahindra) to as low as 23 per cent (Patni). Besides, almost all companies saw their share of revenues from Europe growing significantly in FY07.
All large IT services firms are focusing on integrating their BPO operations with IT, states the report, resulting in faster growth for BPO. TCS, even though a late entrant in the BPO space, started offering integrated IT-BPO services and overtook Wipro BPO to become the largest BPO player among the IT services firms.
Almost all Indian players focused on bringing down their revenue share from application development and maintenance (ADM) and succeeded. Managed infrastructure services emerged as the new favourite. Infosys, which had identified IP creation as a major thrust at the end of the year, had 81 patent filings.
The weakening dollar and the stronger rupee, according to the DQ report, were not really felt by exporters until the latter 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. Based on average monthly values, the average dollar value in 2006-07 was Rs 45.05 versus Rs 44.11.
Incidentally, acquisition to acquire skill has become the common strategy for Indian IT service 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 Cap Gemini notwithstanding, states the report.
Wipro continued with its string-of-pearls acquisition strategy and successfully managed a transformation of its BPO unit, temporarily affecting growth, but increasing realisation.
IBM, with close to 55,000 people today, is next only to the top-three Indian IT companies in terms of manpower.