Among the Sensex firms, Infosys jumped more than 6% in early trade despite reporting a lower-than-expected 7.3% fall in net profit in the December quarter.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Benchmark equity indices surged in early trade on January 12, driven by a rally in IT stocks and a firm trend in Asian markets. The 30-share BSE Sensex jumped 492.71 points to 72,213.89 in early deals. The Nifty climbed 141.95 points to 21,789.15.

Among the Sensex firms, Infosys jumped more than 6% in early trade despite reporting a lower-than-expected 7.3% fall in net profit in the December quarter on sluggish demand from clients and cut its annual sales forecast.

Tata Consultancy Services climbed nearly 4% after the largest software exporter reported an 8.2% growth in net income for the December quarter at ₹11,735 crore, driven by a massive growth in the home market that offset to a large extent the impact of a 3% degrowth in the U.S. market.

The other prominent gainers were Wipro, Tech Mahindra, HCL Technologies and JSW Steel. Mahindra & Mahindra, Asian Paints, Power Grid, Nestle, Hindustan Unilever and Titan were among the laggards.

“With inline results from Infosys and better-than-expected results from TCS, IT stocks will see some action today. Even though there is no positive message from the management commentary, the market is likely to respond positively to the absence of any bad news,” V. K. Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services, said.

“The U.S. CPI inflation inching up to 3.4% year-over-year is slightly negative from the global equity market perspective,” he added. In Asian markets, Tokyo, Shanghai and Hong Kong were trading higher while Seoul quoted lower.

The U.S. markets ended mostly in the green on January 11. Global oil benchmark Brent crude jumped 1.82% to $78.82 a barrel. Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) offloaded equities worth ₹865 crore on January 11, according to exchange data.

The BSE benchmark climbed 63.47 points or 0.09% to settle at 71,721.18 on Thursday. The Nifty gained 28.50 points or 0.13% to 21,647.20.