Seven of the 13 sectoral indexes declined. Information technology (IT) stocks were little-changed, having lost 8% in the past five sessions since Tata Consultancy Services reported its quarterly results.
Analysts said that the underlying short-term trend of markets remained choppy and expected the benchmark to find support at around 17,500 levels.
"For now, the market is stuck in a narrow range," said
Siddhartha Khemka, head of retail research at Motilal Oswal
Financial Services.
"While IT stocks continue to pile the pressure, even
FIIs have turned net sellers, adding to overall weakness."
HCLTech Ltd traded marginally lower ahead of its earnings later in the day, while Reliance Industries Ltd , India's biggest firm by market capitalisation, fell 0.4% ahead of its fourth-quarter results on Friday.
TCS and Infosys
reported weak Q4 results and
flagged uncertainties in client spending, especially in the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) segment.
Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) have sold Indian equities over the last three sessions, offloading 131.7 million rupees ($1.6 million) on Wednesday.
Among individual stocks, ICICI Securities fell
over 5% after reporting a slide in net profit for the March
quarter, as rising costs dragged earnings. Brokerage firm Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd leaped more than 18% after receiving an
in-principle approval
from the market regulator to sponsor a mutual fund.
($1 = 82.2400 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Bharath Rajeswaran in Bengaluru; Editing by Varun
H K, Sonia Cheema and Nivedita Bhattacharjee)
