IT leads Indian shares higher after HCLTech tops Q2 profit estimate

** India's Nifty 50 .NSEI and BSE Sensex .BSESN up 0.6%

** IT stocks .NIFTYIT jump 4%, led by 7% surge in HCLTech HCLT.NS after quarterly profit beat

** Jefferies upgrades HCLT to "hold" from "underperform", says co among few large IT firms offering over 5% constant currency revenue growth

** Ten of 16 sectors gain; small-caps .NIFSMCP100 down 0.8%, while mid-caps .NIFMDCP100 up 0.2%

** Rupee strengthens for second consecutive day to 95.235 per dollar on RBI measures to stem slide

** Asian stocks slide, led by a 6% slump in South Korea's KOSPI .KS11 on sell-off in chipmakers MKTS/GLOB

** Optical fibre makers Sterlite Technologies STTE.NS and HFCL HFCL.NS, which supply to data centers, down 4.8% and 2.2%, respectively, as sell-off in AI-linked stocks globally hits sentiment

** Vikran Engineering VIKN.NS jumps 12.6% after its unit secured funding from IREDA INAR.NS