India's Larsen & Toubro Lifts Profit 14 Percent as Domestic Demand Cushions Global Tech Selloff

Indian equities separated from the global selloff in technology stocks, supported by a series of solid domestic corporate results. Larsen & Toubro, the country's largest engineering and construction group, reported a 14 percent rise in quarterly net profit to 4,123 crore rupees and a 7 percent increase in revenue to 67,942 crore rupees, with international operations now contributing just over half of the total. The shares rose about 4 percent, and several brokerages, including Goldman Sachs, kept positive ratings, the Economic Times reported.

Smaller companies contributed to the gains. Inox Wind rose about 3 percent after securing a repeat 200-megawatt turnkey order worth 1,600 crore rupees from NLC India, lifting its order book to 4.7 gigawatts, according to the Economic Times. The Sensex rose nearly 1 percent and the Nifty approached 24,200, aided by a firmer rupee and continued foreign inflows.

The divergence points to a market driven more by domestic order books, infrastructure spending and financial companies than by the concentrated artificial-intelligence (AI) linked stocks that set the direction in Seoul and on the Nasdaq.