i-flex, very much a favourite with investors, was propelled upward on Friday on reports that it has bagged a Citigroup contract worth $200 million.

By 9:57 IST, the scrip of the Mumbai-based software maker climbed 3.66% to Rs 847.80. It registered volumes of 19,695 shares on BSE so far.

However, the scrip has been run down over the past few sessions as a result of the general poor sentiment in tech stocks. In the six sessions between 4 and 12 February 2003, i-flex lost over 7% to Rs 817.85 from Rs 880.

The buying on Friday in i-flex Solutions precipitates on reports that the company has bagged a $200-million order from Citigroup. It may be noted that Citigroup, the global financial services company, has a 42% stake in the software major. According to reports, this is the largest software project awarded to an Indian software services company till date. The contract will run till 2005-end. Citigroup plans to implement i-flex's banking software product, Flexcube, in more than 93 countries.

Of late, i-flex has been in the limelight following the huge success of its key banking product Flexcube, which has been instrumental in pushing up the company's fortunes. The product has already been rolled out in more than 30 countries.

Flexcube has been ranked among the two top selling wholesale banking back-office systems in 1999 and 2000, and among the three top selling retail banking systems in the world in 2000 by IBS. In 2001, it was ranked among the two top selling solutions in both the retail banking and the wholesale banking sales league table.

i-flex Solutions, a leading provider of technology solutions to the financial services sector, derives over 60% of its revenues from high margin products. Its range of solutions includes packaged applications for the financial services industry, custom application software development, deployment, maintenance and support services for financial institutions, and business and IT consulting services in the financial services domain.

Last month, i-flex announced its third quarter ended 31 December 2002 consolidated results - a rise in net profit by 117% to Rs 59 crore compared to Rs 27.18 crore in the corresponding period of the previous year. Revenues increased 50% to Rs 174 crore (Rs 1.74 billion) from Rs 115.66 crore (Rs 1.15 billion) in DQ 2001.

As on 31 December 2002, the promoters' holding in i-flex was 43.2%, while the public, local institutions and foreign institutions held 40.6%, 4.3% and 10.96%, respectively.