IT stocks gain on weak Rupee; TCS, NIIT Tech climb 3%

Shares of information technology (I-T) companies surged on Friday, buoyed by a fall in Indian Rupee against the US dollar after a key Iranian and Iraqi military personnel were killed by a US airstrike that sent the oil prices soaring.

Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis were killed early on Friday in an air strike on their convoy at Baghdad airport, Reuters reported.

At the interbank foreign exchange market, the domestic currency opened weak at 71.27 a dollar. It touched the day's high of 71.26, before finally settling at 71.38, a drop of 16 paise over its previous close.

At 10:13 AM, the Nifty IT index was trading 1.84 per cent higher as compared 0.3 per cent dip in the benchmark Nifty50 index.

Among individual stocks, NIIT Tech and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) gained over 3 per cent each while HCL Technologies and Hexaware Technologies were both up over 2 per cent. Infosys, Tech Mahindra, Wipro, Tata Elxsi, and Mindtree were all up in the range of 1 per cent to 2 per cent on the NSE.

The IT services companies, who make most of their revenues servicing clients in US tend to benefit from a weaker rupee.

TATA Consultancy Services ( TCS )