The New York-listed firm, riding on an outsourcing wave, said its total revenues shot up 21 percent to 5.7 billion rupees for the three months to June.

It projected income from software exports for the second quarter to be about 5.6 billion rupees and raised its full year revenue growth target to between 18 and 20 percent from an earlier 15 percent to 17 percent.

Market dealers said the Satyam results were largely above expectations as investors had virtually ignored the company in the last few weeks, especially after lukewarm results from other software blue chips.

In noon trade on the Bombay Stock Exchange, Satyam was up 5.05 rupees or 2.87 percent at 180.85, while the 30-share index was up 16.40 points or 0.46 percent at 3,594.29.

B. Ramalinga Raju, chairman of Satyam, said despite the revision in revenue guidance, challenges remain.

"The revision of guidance upwards is by no means an indication of the lack of challenges in the environment," he said.

"The continuing economic uncertainty in our major markets coupled with a rising trend of non-tariff barriers does impose challenges on us."

Raju said outsourcing and offshore work was currently being accepted as a "strategic imperative" by global corporations who want to cut costs and this was translating into a healthy pipeline in terms of opportunities.

Growth in revenues during the first quarter, he added, was broad-based and came from across the industry, technology segments and geographic regions.

Satyam, which has a presence in 45 countries, said that during the first quarter it had hired 806 software professionals and 833 support staff, including human resource and finance department personnel.

The hiring was the highest in the last 10 quarters while the company added 22 new customers during the three months compared to the previous quarter.

Raju said international funds would soon invest 20 million dollars in Nipuna Services Ltd., Satyam's business process outsourcing subsidiary.

"An agreement to this effect has been signed between these funds ... The transaction is expected to be concluded in the next few weeks," he said.

Nipuna, which currently employs 164 people and has five customers, was set up in June 2002 to provide outsourcing services with a four million dollar commitment from the parent company Satyam.

"The investments will allow Nipuna to access the global relationship network of the new investors," Raju said, without disclosing the identities of the investors.

Satyam development centers in India, the United States, Europe, Japan and Singapore serve 290 global companies, including 60 Fortune 500 corporations.

"Satyam's performance is definitely above expectations as the market had virtually written off the company because it is not very transparent and open," said Anish Marfatia, assistant vice president at Asit C Mehta Investments.

"I guess Satyam stock is also up on Wednesday's late buying in the tech sector after Morgan Stanley put out a report making a case for buying in the tech sector at current levels."

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