Mumbai, July 18 : The Indian equity indices opened lower on Friday as heavyweights like Axis Bank and Bharti Airtel were among the top losers in the BSE benchmark.

At 9.25 am, Sensex was down 171 points or 0.21 per cent at 82,087 and Nifty was down 35 points or 0.14 per cent at 25,075.

In the Sensex pack, M&M, Tata Steel, Power Grid, L&T, UltraTech Cement, Infosys, Tata Motors, BEL, NTPC, TCS, Trent and Maruti Suzuki were top gainers. Axis Bank, Bharti Airtel, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Tech Mahindra , HDFC Bank, Eternal (Zomato),HUL, Sun Pharma, Bajaj Finance, ICICI Bank, Titan and Bajaj Finserv were top losers.

On the sectoral front, auto, IT, PSU bank, metal, realty, media, energy, infra, PSE and commodities were major gainers, while financial services, FMCG and private bank were in the red.

'In July, so far, India has been underperforming most markets, with a dip of 1.6 per cent in Nifty. A significant contributor to the decline is the selling by FIIs. There is a clear pattern in FII activity this year so far," said Dr VK Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist, Geojit Investments Limited.

They were sellers in the first three months. For the next three months, they turned buyers and in the seventh month, the trends so far indicate further selling unless some positive news reverse the downtrend in the market.

On the institutional side, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) remained net sellers for the second consecutive session on July 17, offloading equities worth Rs 3,694 crore. Meanwhile, domestic institutional investors (DIIs) continued their buying spree for the ninth straight session, purchasing equities worth Rs 2,820 crore.

Akshay Chinchalkar, Head of Research, Axis Securities, said Nifty ended down for the fifth time in seven days on Thursday, but the market is still holding above the rising trendline drawn from the May 9 lows.

'Technically speaking, the daily candle completed a bearish engulfing pattern, and that's not surprising given that we'd mentioned that closing above 25,245 and then 25,340 was essential for bulls to make a comeback. So, 25,000 remains the support level to watch while 25,340 is vital resistance. Asian cues are mostly bullish this morning along with US index futures,' he mentioned.

Major Asian markets were trading in the green. Shanghai, Hong Kong, Bangkok and Jakarta were major gainers, while Tokyo and Seoul were trading lower. The US market closed in the green on Thursday due to positive investor sentiments.

/IANS