BENGALURU: Indian shares opened little changed on Friday, hovering near record highs, as a surge in IT stocks after their US peer Accenture posted a better-than-expected quarterly profit was offset by a decline in heavyweight financials.

The benchmark Nifty 50 and BSE Sensex opened flat at 26,248.25 points and 85,893.84, respectively.

The Sensex briefly inched higher to hit an all-time high of 85,935.31.

Despite the muted start, the benchmarks were on track for their third consecutive week of gains, continuing their strong performance this year.

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The latest seven-day rally follows an outsized US rate cut last Wednesday, which bolstered expectations of higher foreign inflows into emerging markets such as India.

IT companies, which have the second-heaviest weightage among the major sectors and earn a big chunk of their revenue from US clients, rose nearly 3% and were set for their best day in over a month after US peer Accenture posted better-than-expected quarterly earnings due to strong demand for its AI services.

Market leaders TCS, Infosys Wipro and HCLTech were up between 1.7% and 3.5%.

However, gains on the benchmark indexes were kept in check by a 0.4% drop in top-weighted financial stocks, which fell after adding over 1% in the prior two sessions.