Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India's largest outsourcer, Monday reported strong revenue and profit growth for the quarter that ended Dec. 31, driven by new client wins and a ramp up in business from existing customers.

Revenue for the quarter was 48.6 billion Indian rupees ($1.1 billion at the exchange rate on the closing day of the quarter), up 40.8 percent over revenue in the same quarter in the previous year. The company's profits grew in the quarter by 47.25 percent to 11 billion rupees in the same quarter in the previous year.

Despite the appreciation of the rupee over major currencies, TCS was able to increase its revenue because of larger volumes of business, new services, and higher prices, S. Mahalingam, the company's chief financial officer, told analysts Monday. The company's margins have also improved because of higher pricing, cost cutting, improved productivity, and a shift of more work offshore to India, he added.

The results are based on U.S. GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) and refer to the third quarter of TCS' fiscal year, which runs to March 31 of this year.

TCS, based in Mumbai, added 5,562 employees during the quarter, taking the total number of staff to 83,500 at the end of the quarter, with employees from 60 different nationalities.

Indian outsourcing companies are competing for staff with Indian subsidiaries of multinational services companies such as IBM and Accenture, which are expanding in the country. TCS' staff attrition rate in the quarter was 10.8 percent, up from 8.7 percent in the same quarter of the previous year. TCS has adopted a number of strategies to increase staff availability, including increasing the number of people hired out of college rather than those who work for other companies, and hiring science graduates besides engineers.

TCS has set up operations in China, Eastern Europe, and Latin America both for proximity to customers and to take advantage of talent pools outside India. More than 90 percent of its staff was still from India at the end of the quarter. The company added 55 new clients during the quarter, including five new deals of more than $50 million each.

Indian outsourcing companies continue to ride a boom in outsourcing. India's second largest outsourcer, Infosys Technologies reported last week that revenue for the quarter that ended Dec. 31 was $821 million, up 46.9 percent from revenue of $559 million in the same quarter of the previous year. The company's profits also grew by 52 percent to $218 million from $143 million.