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By Kashish Tandon
(Reuters) -Indian shares inched lower on Friday, weighed down by IT and financials, as investors remained jittery about the Federal Reserve's projection of fewer rate cuts next year, which has spurred an exodus of foreign funds.
The Nifty 50 was down 0.1% at 23,928.60 as of 10:45 a.m. IST, while the BSE Sensex shed 0.2% to 79,078.69.
Both benchmarks have logged weekly losses of over 3% so far. The indexes are heading for their first weekly decline in five.
The Fed this week delivered a quarter-point rate cut but forecast two reductions in 2025, half of what policymakers had anticipated, dampening foreign investors' appetite for Indian equities.
They offloaded 122.31 billion rupees ($1.44 billion) of stocks this week until Thursday, but are still net buyers in December after being net sellers for two straight months.
U.S. rate cuts tend to help emerging markets assets, such as Indian equities, as they boost foreign inflows.
In Mumbai, heavyweight financials dropped 0.3%, with Axis Bank sliding 2.2%.
Domestic IT firms, which earn a chunk of their revenue from the U.S. and are sensitive to the country's interest rates, fell 0.2%, giving up early gains after peer Accenture beat quarterly revenue and profit estimates.
"Even though Accenture's upbeat results gave an initial boost to tech stocks, Fed's hawkish rate cut outlook has hurt sentiment and foreign investment inflows are still negative," said Anita Gandhi, founder and head of institution at Arihant Capital Markets.
Meanwhile, pharma stocks, which earn most of their revenue from exports, climbed 0.3% and were set for a weekly gain of 3%.
The Indian rupee hit an all-time low of 85.10 on Friday on persistent dollar strength, making it cheaper for other countries to import drugs from India.
Among individual stocks, battery maker Amara Raja gained as much as 5% after Hyundai Motor India said it would equip its domestic cars with the company's absorbent glass mat battery technology.
($1 = 85.0860 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Kashish Tandon in Bengaluru; Editing by Eileen Soreng and Sonia Cheema)