The results were announced by the board of directors here on Friday. Addressing a press conference, HCL Technologies chairman and chief executive officer Shiv Nadar said: "The company's consistent and strategic focus on a non-linear growth model has benefited it in gaining new customers to provide high value added solutions in the areas of embedded systems, e-commerce and networking. This has enabled a quality revenue mix and significant growth."

In his presentation, Mr Nadar claimed that the growth in profit and revenue in this quarter has come with just 54 per cent growth in the software engineers in the company. The company currently employs 3,773 software engineers and has also added 18 new customers in its list in the last quarter making a total tally of 304 customer, he added.

Mr Nadar also said that the company currently has 13 technology development centres located across Gurgaon, Noida and Chennai and three more new centres are under construction and will be operational by the end of this calendar year at same locations. The company presently has got 25 offshore development units against 10 units in the second quarter of previous year. A global network operating centre is also under implementation and will be ready by the third quarter of 2001, he added.

When asked about the future impact of the US industry slow down on company's business, Mr Nadar said that HCL has positioned itself up in the value chain and will not get affected. Moreover, the discussions with our clients and partners reveal that the large corporations are not cutting down on their technology budgets rather they are planning to capitalise on technology to get an edge in the market for their products and services.