GURGAON: Despite tough business environment worldwide, Indian IT companies have a reason to cheer. Two Indian companies, Wipro technologies and Infosys technologies are among the top 10 rising stars in Western Europe. Wipro Technologies ranks second in the top ten list with growth of 69% in 2000-01 and Infosys technologies ranks fourth with growth of 57% in the same period.

In terms of overall ranking in Western Europe, Wipro ranks 95 with total services revenue of $92 million in 2001. Infosys leads marginally with a ranking of 91 and services revenue of 99 million USD for the same period. Tata technologies that just missed the top ten rising star status had a growth of 33% in 2000-2001 and ranks above the other two at 83^rd position.

Even in the current situation of economic recession, the European market has been slightly encouraging with the number of deals getting doubled in the last quarter of 2001 as compared to the same quarter in 2000 though the deals have been largely tactical in nature. Indian companies have been able to capture large chunk of this pie, which is evident from their growth in the region and their status as a rising star.

Though total IT services industry in Western Europe grew at a slow rate of 7 per cent in 2001-02 but outsourcing grew twice as fast at 15 per cent during the same period. The skills shortage and need of cost cutting that has marked the European technology sector provides great opportunities for the Indian offshore service providers.

According to Ms Marianne Kolding, Director European Services Research, IDC, Europe, "The opportunities lie mostly in the application development and application maintenance areas - and increasingly in application management which is currently a market growing at a 19% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in Western Europe between 2001-2006. Further opportunities can be found in parts of the implementation of enterprise application, e.g customization elements."