Tata Consultancy Services, India's top IT services provider, reported a smaller-than-expected fourth-quarter revenue on Friday as cautious spending by clients as macroeconomic uncertainty remain an overhang.

TCS, the first of the country's IT firms to report results, said consolidated revenue rose 3.5% to 612.37 billion rupees ($7.34 billion) in the January-March quarter, missing analysts' expectation of 615.63 billion rupees, as per LSEG data.

The industry has been accepting tougher contract terms to win large deals as they compete for fewer orders and also grappling with clients renegotiating, delaying or cancelling contracts, resulting in a sharp slowdown in the industry's growth from the pandemic-fuelled boom a few years back.

Industry body Nasscom expects the sector's overall revenue growth to more than halve to 3.8% from 8.4%.

However, like its peers, TCS has been managing expenses to compensate for the slowing revenue growth. That helped its net profit increase 9.2% to 124.34 billion rupees in the latest quarter.

Its smaller peers Infosys and Wipro are scheduled to report their results next week.

TCS's shares have gained about 6% so far this year, while the broader IT index has shed 1.4%. The blue-chip Nifty 50 index has gained 3.6%.

($1 = 83.4363 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Haripriya Suresh; Editing by Savio D'Souza)