New Delhi, Mar 23 (IANS): India's key equity indices -- Sensex and Nifty -- extended their gains from the previous session to rise marginally in early trade on Wednesday.

At 9.55 a.m., Sensex was 0.4 per cent or 216 points up at 58,206 points, whereas Nifty 0.5 per cent or 61 points up at 17,377 points.

"There are two significant trends in the market now. One, 17000 Nifty has now become a strong technical support for the market. The sharp bounce from the 17,000 levels yesterday indicates that this is a strong support level now," said V.K. Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services.

Among the individual stocks, Dr Reddy's, Divis Labs, Hindalco, ITC, and Bajaj Finance were the top gainers among the Nifty50 companies, rising 2.8 per cent, 2.4 per cent, 1.8 per cent, 1.2 per cent, and 1.1 per cent, respectively.

On the contrary, Bharti Airtel, Britannia, Maruti Suzuki, Coal India, and Hero Motocorp were the top losers.