Mumbai, Oct. 17: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the country’s top software exporter, reported a 6.1 per cent year-on-year growth in net profits at Rs 2,301 crore in the second quarter ended September 30. In the year-ago period, it had earned Rs 2,169 crore.

However, analysts fretted over the fact that net profits at the software giant shrank 4.7 per cent from Rs 2,415 crore at the end of the first quarter ended June 30.

The IT company posted a more impressive topline number with revenues in the second quarter higher by 25.3 per cent compared with the year -ago period and up by 7.7 per cent quarter-on-quarter.

Second-quarter revenues stood at Rs 11,633 crore compared with Rs 9,286 crore in the year-ago period. The performance was just a tad shy of the analysts’ median estimates of Rs 11,700 crore.

In the first quarter, TCS had reported revenues of Rs 10,797 crore.

Sources said one reason for the crimped profits was the 39.16 per cent jump in taxes at Rs 937.73 crore against Rs 673.85 crore at the end of the first quarter. Taxes rose 103.8 per cent over the year-ago level of Rs 460.14 crore.

“Our domain-rich solution and disciplined execution helped us capture business demand across major markets and deliver stellar growth in international revenues,” TCS chief executive officer and managing director N. Chandrasekaran said.

The company was seeing a certain amount of uncertainty in the global economy and did not expect a price increase in this negative environment, he added.

S. Mahalingam, the company’s chief financial officer, warned of volatility in currency markets. “Given the breadth of our global operations across 45 countries, the recent unprecedented volatility in the foreign currency market is a fresh cause for concern,” he added.

TCS made a gross addition of 20,349 employees during the quarter — a new high — while net addition stood at 12,580 employees. The company had a total employee strength of 214,770.

It was able to bring down its attrition rates significantly to 13.7 per cent from 14.8 per cent in the first quarter of this fiscal year.

The company has not made any change in its hiring targets for the year, said Ajoyendra Mukherjee, TCS executive vice-president and global head, human resources.

“Our employee engagement efforts are helping us to curtail attrition and increase retention of talent. We remain the industry benchmark as far as utilisation is concerned and have maintained our rate in the 83 per cent range,” Mukherjee said.

During the three months ended September 30, 2011, the company added two $100-million-plus customers.

The company saw significant growth across all major markets.

The TCS stock fell 1.3 per cent to Rs 1,119.80 on the Bombay Stock Exchange before the earnings announcement.