After three years of strong growth, top 20 IT companies in India, a majority of them engaged in IT services exports, recorded a revenue growth of 24 per cent in 2007-08, recording a sharp drop from 41 per cent in the previous financial year, according to a survey.

The top 20 IT services exporters recorded a growth of 29 per cent compared to 45 per cent in 2006-07, findings of the CyberMedia's Dataquest Indian IT Industry survey 2008 revealed.

These top 20 domestic IT players recorded 27 per cent growth against 31 per cent last year. Three foreign multinationals -  Accenture, SAP and Dell--entered the list.

A stronger Rupee adversely impacted the exports-heavy Indian IT industry in FY 08 when the average value of the Rupee in comparison to the Dollar rose nine per cent, with a vast majority of IT companies still unfazed by a slowdown in the global outsourcing industry.

In the listing of the Top 20 IT companies from India, the top seven positions remained unchanged, with TCS [Get Quote], Wipro [Get Quote], Infosys [Get Quote], HP India, IBM India, Ingram Micro and Satyam Computer Services [Get Quote] retaining their positions, from number one through number seven.

HP India and Ingram Micro derive a major part of their revenues from the sale of computer systems and peripherals, while the others make money from exports of software services; IBM India has significant services--domestic and exports--revenue, as well as systems sales.

Unlike the previous year, there was no major change in the rankings in the top 14 positions with no company moving up or down by more than two places.

The Top 20 Club - ranking of top IT companies in India by revenue - also saw changes, with three new companies - two of them doing business primarily in the domestic market - entering the list, while three export-led firms made their exit.

All three new entrants are non-Indian firms -  Accenture, SAP and Dell - which replaced three Indian firms, Teledata, Patni and Moser Baer [Get Quote], that ranks among the Top 10 CD makers in the world.

A noteworthy development is the entry of Accenture India at number 15(the company was not tracked by the study in previous years,though it was operating its development centre India for nearly a decade) and SAP India, which rose six positions to be a number 18, driven by a strong performance in the small and medium enterprise (SME) market, that helped it record 84 per cent growth.

"After three years of strong growth, FY07-08 was a challenging year for the Top 20 companies in several ways, not least of all due to the exchange rate, which meant an over 10 per cent hit right away in rupee earnings, for exporters", says Pradeep Gupta, publisher of CyberMedia group.

"Yet the fact that the Top 20 - especially exporters - still grew as much as they did speaks volumes about their robustness, domain expertise and maturity".