Sensex falls over 400 points, Nifty below 18,000 at open

Equity benchmarks declined in initial trade on Wednesday amid unabated foreign fund outflows and a weak trend in index heavyweight Reliance Industries.

Continuing its previous day decline, the 30-share BSE Sensex fell 309.7 points to 59,805.78 in initial trade. The broader NSE Nifty dipped 89.8 points to 17,824.35.

From the Sensex pack, Bharti Airtel, Mahindra & Mahindra, Hindustan Unilever, Axis Bank, Bajaj Finserv, Reliance Industries, HDFC and IndusInd Bank were the major laggards.

Tata Motors, HCL Technologies, Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, UltraTech Cement and ICICI Bank were among the winners.

"The biggest drag on the market in the near-term is the sustained selling by FIIs for 13 continuous sessions, which has taken the cumulative cash market selling to Rs 16,587 crore," said V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services.

Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) offloaded shares worth Rs 2,109.34 crore on Tuesday, according to exchange data.

Elsewhere in Asia, equity markets in Seoul, Tokyo, Shanghai and Hong Kong were trading in the green.

Markets in the US had ended in positive territory on Tuesday.

The 30-share BSE benchmark had tanked 631.83 points or 1.04 per cent to settle at 60,115.48 on Tuesday. The Nifty declined 187.05 points or 1.03 per cent to end at 17,914.15.

International oil benchmark Brent crude declined 0.72 per cent to $79.52 per barrel.