India’s second-largest software exporter Infosys Technologies provided an upbeat forecast for the country’s over $50-billion industry by reporting a lower-than-expected fall in its profit for the third quarter and revising its earlier outlook upwards, resuming outsourcing of IT and back-office projects.

Infosys, which counts JP Morgan, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs as its customers, revised its business outlook for the year ending March 2010, and said revenues for the year will rise as much as 3.8% to Rs 22,519 crore versus the earlier 1.7% growth predicted at the end of September quarter.

“Global economic recovery seems to be led by the US, and the financial services,” said chief executive and managing director S Gopalakrishnan. “Even though IT budgets are expected to be flat in 2010, offshore outsourcing is expected to benefit from this recovery,” he added. Infosys shares rose 4% to Rs 2,587.45 on Tuesday while the BSE IT index gained 4%. The Sensex slipped 0.5%.

The company, which added 32 new customers during the quarter, said its net profit fell by 3.6% to Rs 1,582 crore during the third quarter ended December, and revenues grew by 2.8% sequentially to Rs 5,741 crore.

As America’s top banks emerge from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and economy starts showing signs of recovery, Indian outsourcing vendors —TCS, Infosys and Wipro — are set to gain new offshoring projects worth around $1 billion over next 1-2 years, experts said.

In many ways, Infosys, the first among the country’s top tech firms to announce its financial results, has been providing outlook for India’s outsourcing sector over the past many years. Indeed, when rivals TCS and Wipro announce their Q3 earnings later this month, investors and analysts would be hoping that they also reflect the positive outlook. “We now expect TCS to report a much better volume growth and Wipro to revise its guidance upwards. It looks like the worst is over for India’s tech sector,” said an analyst at a multinational brokerage firm.

He requested anonymity because he is not authorised to give media interviews. Both TCS and Wipro count Citigroup among their top customers. For Infosys, and many of its peers, any sign of recovery among the banking sector customers means a lot as they derive nearly one-third of their revenues from them.

For instance, Infosys, which derives over 34% of its revenues from banking and financial services (BFSI) customers, the consolidation among the top US and European banks is bringing new business, with some of these individual contracts worth around $500 million each, potentially.

Out of the 32 new customers signed during the Q3, 14 are from the BFSI. Integration of different banking systems emerged as a lucrative opportunity for vendors such as Infosys during the quarter. While BofA is in the process of integrating its systems with Merrill Lynch, RBS is attempting to consolidate its IT systems with ABN Amro. As these banks merge, they now face a mammoth task of integrating their software applications, consolidating their data centres and other trading platforms into single entity.