Long blamed for shying away from risk, India's technology firms are now beginning to take on projects linked to future milestones and are even acquiring customer staff as part of large, complex outsourcing contracts.

Such projects will help local companies compete aggressively with multinational rivals. This risk-taking is beginning to show on the balance-sheets of software companies like Tata Consultancy Services , Wipro, Infosys and HCL Technologies in the form of 'unbilled revenue'. Simply put, this pertains to work completed for which a bill has not yet been issued to clients.

Unbilled revenue has now grown from anywhere between 17% and 33% of total revenues for some leading IT firms. This coincides with a rise in fixed price contracts.