Muted Q1: Nasscom says no cut in FY17 growth target of 10-12 per cent

NEW DELHI: Even as some large Indian IT companies have posted lower-than-expected June quarter numbers and issued muted sales outlook, Nasscom today said it sees no reason to cut industry's full year growth forecast of 10-12 per cent.

Nasscom President R Chandrashekhar told PTI that from an industry standpoint, the growth continues to be uniformly distributed and there is no reduction in demand for IT services.

"Nasscom does not see any reason to change the industry's annual forecast... Currently, the growth is quite uniformly spread between verticals, geographies, service lines...we are seeing well-distributed growth... Also, the feedback from companies, as of now, is that they do not see any diminishing demand. So, there is no reduction in demand (for IT services)," he said.

Chandrashekhar's comments come at a time when the two large IT companies Infosys and Wipro have disappointed the street with muted Q1 numbers.

Wipro, on Tuesday, missed street expectations with over 6 per cent fall in net profit for the first quarter ended June and forecast that IT services sales would grow less than 1 per cent during July-September.

The company, which announced the disappointing set of numbers after markets hours yesterday, expects revenue from IT services to be USD 1,931-1,950 million for the September quarter, that is flat to 1 per cent sequential growth.

Last week, Wipro's larger rival Infosys had slashed its annual sales forecast, sending the stock crashing the most on a single day since Vishal Sikka became CEO more than two years ago.

Infosys, which does not give quarterly outlook, had lowered its dollar guidance for the full fiscal to 10-11.5 per cent from 11.8-13.8 per cent (projected in April) due to currency volatility and headwinds.

Infosys had also said that it was facing unanticipated headwinds in discretionary spending in consulting services and package implementations as well as slower project ramp-ups in large deals.