India, Aug. 26 -- India's top information technology services companies are increasingly placing bold bets on markets like Australia, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines as their biggest growth markets remain stubbornly stagnant. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Infosys Ltd, HCL Technologies Ltd and Wipro Ltd have cumulatively announced about half a dozen acquisitions or government partnerships in under 12 months to offset macro uncertainties and expand their footprint. These IT outsourcers earn 84-94% of their revenue from the US, Canada and Europe, and the rest from 'growth markets', which include Latin America and Asia-Pacific regions such as Australia, New Zealand and India. However, the strategy is fraught with challenges and could take a while to yield significant additional revenue as the US and Europe remain the sector's largest cash cows. Additionally, these geographies may not become as big for these companies in at least 18-24 months, according to analysts. But primarily as a result of slow demand in the US and Europe, India's top IT services companies have lost business to smaller, more agile peers, reporting slow growth for two consecutive financial years. R. Wang, founder of Constellation Research, a US-based technology research and advisory firm, said the recent acquisitions were not a concerted strategy but a move to offset low demand in the Indian IT services sector's largest markets. "The move to the East has more to do with market expansion and opportunistic growth," he said. "Europe and North America are still regions with more margin and opportunities for higher revenue growth, but the market is currently stagnant." Last week, Wipro, India's fourth-largest IT services company, acquired Harman Digital Transformation Services, owned by South Korea-based Samsung Electronics, for $375 million to strengthen its engineering arm. While the deal will add to Wipro's revenue, which declined in the previous two financial years, it will hurt the company's operating margin, brokerage Nomura said in a note dated August 21. The Harman DTS acquisition, if successful, could add about 280 basis points, or 2.8 percentage points, to Wipro's revenue in 2026-27, the brokerage said. But it pointed out that the "management has indicated the deal could negatively impact EBIT margin by ~50bp in FY27F (on full-year basis) due to integration costs, amortisation charges and lower margin to start with in the acquired entity". Wipro ended FY25 with $10.5 billion in revenue, down 2.7%, but its operating margin jumped 100 basis points to 17.1%. Earlier in August, Infosys said it had bought a 75% stake in Australia-based IT firm, Versent Group, for $150 million. Versent reported $137 million in revenue for FY25, which would mean an incremental revenue of 0.7% for Infosys, which ended the previous financial year with a 3.85% increase in revenue to $19.28 billion. In May, Infosys acquired Australian cybersecurity firm The Missing Link for AUD 98 million ($64 million). Infosys's "acquisitions would primarily be aimed at greater participation in growth areas," Kotak Institutional Equities analysts Kawaljeet Saluja, Sathishkumar S., and Vamshi Krishna said in a note dated 19 August....