Indian shares pared nearly all gains on Wednesday, as Reliance Industries weighed on indexes after it failed to meet investor expectations at its annual general meeting, while a surge in IT stocks capped losses.
The NSE Nifty 50 index and the S&P BSE Sensex both fell from a session high of over 2% and ended with modest gains of 0.1% and 0.05%, respectively.
India's most valuable stock, Reliance, which was up 3.2% ahead of its AGM, erased all its gains and fell as much as 6.21% in the session.
The oil-to-telecoms conglomerate announced a slew of deals, including a $4.5 billion investment in its Jio Platforms unit by Alphabet Inc's Google.
However, a widely anticipated deal between Reliance and Saudi Aramco, which did not progress according to schedule, weighed on investors, said Ajit Mishra, a vice-president at Religare Broking.
"All the announcements were already taken into account. Investors were hoping for something on the retail front too," Mishra added.
Coronavirus cases in the world's second-most populous country also continued to surge and rose to 936,181 as of Wednesday morning, according to federal government data, and more states and cities entered fresh phases of lockdowns.
IT stocks checked the fall in markets with the Nifty IT index closing 5.24% higher.
Wipro rose as much as 19.4% to its highest percentage gain in over 11 years and topped the Nifty index, after reporting a better-than-expected profit for the three months ended June 30 along with the acquisition of Brazil-based IVIA Servicos De Informatica Ltda.
Larger rival Infosys, which is expected to report first-quarter results later on Wednesday evening, gained 6.75% after it announced a partnership with US-based investment management firm Vanguard late on Tuesday.
Bharti Airtel was the session's top laggard, shedding 4.4%.
