The top five India-based IT services recorded a growth of 23.8% during 2011, compared with 7.7% growth for the global IT services market as a whole, according to a report by Gartner.

Cognizant was the top performer among them growing at the rate of 33.3%, overtook Wipro to become the third-largest Indian IT services provider amongst the top five service providers in 2011.

The other companies included TCS at number one spot, followed by Infosys at second and Wipro and HCL Technologies at fourth and fifth, respectively.

Gartner principal research analyst Arup Roy said 2011 signalled a change in the mind-set of European buyers, particularly Continental Europe for offshore services.

"Indian providers have historically found it more difficult to gain market share in the Western Europe IT services market than in the US market, but, as a group, the top five increased market share in the region from 2.3 percent in 2010 to 2.8 percent in 2011," added Roy.

The Tier 1 providers’ growth rates outperformed Tier 2 and Tier 3 providers, despite the consolidation and acquisitions among some of the smaller firms.

There were some standouts, however, with Genpact up 27% and Syntel up 21%, Gartner revealed.

"The top five Indian service providers have continuously chipped away market share from the large multinational corporation providers," Roy said.

"Their target customer segment still remains the Fortune 1000 companies, which is their sweet spot."

The research firm noted these top five providers have greatly expanded their service portfolios in recent years and are cross selling and up selling their application services client base with offerings such as infrastructure services, business process outsourcing (BPO) services, cloud and analytics services.