Third week into the current results season, most of the top companies in India have surprised analysts and investors with better-than-expected results for the quarter ended December 2011.

On an aggregate basis, of the 75 among the BSE 200 companies that announced their results till Friday, total revenue grew by a healthy 25.6% compared to the year-ago period (Y-o-Y ), while net profit rose 5.6% (Y-o-Y ), an analysis by Edelweiss Financial Services showed.

Growth in revenues as well as net profit has been above the market's expectations. Another sobering aspect during the recent weeks was the pace of lowering FY13 earnings for the 30 sensex constituents, which was just 1%, compared to what it was during the previous quarter.

"Defensive sectors like pharma and consumer goods continued their good run," said Nischal Maheshwari, co-head (institutional equities), Edelweiss Financial Services. "Results in the consumer sector have been above expectation, buoyed by a strong topline growth. In pharma sector too, results have surprised on the upside due to favourable currency movements and betterthan-expected growth in US markets," Maheshwari said.

During the current earnings season, there has been just about 1% cut to the FY13 earnings estimates for sensex companies in aggregate, compared to a much steeper downgrade during the previous quarter. This reflects that analysts are now less pessimistic about the prospects of leading Indian companies than they were a few months ago, brokers said.