How the paycheques of India's top six IT CEOs stack up

The steepest fall in compensation among the six may be that of HCLTech CEO C Vijayakumar, who also took home the least among the top five.

He earned Rs 28.4 crore in FY22-FY23, down 79 percent from the preceding year. This includes Rs 16.44 crore as base salary, Rs 11.8 crore as performance-linked bonus, and Rs 24 lakh in benefits, perquisites, and allowances.

Vijayakumar's salary, however, may rebound the next year as HCLTech pays out the long-term incentive (LTI) at the end of two years. He will receive the LTI for FY21-22 and FY22-23 at the end of FY23-24.

How the others fared

CEO of Infosys, India’s second-largest IT company, Salil Parekh earned Rs 56.44 crore ($6.8 million) in FY22-23. Parekh earned Rs 6.67 crore in base pay, Rs 45 lakh in retiral benefits, Rs 18.73 crore in variable pay or bonus, and Rs 30.6 crore by exercising his RSUs. His pay fell 21 percent, primarily on account of exercising fewer RSUs.

At India’s largest IT company Tata Consultancy Services, former CEO Rajesh Gopinathan earned Rs 29.16 crore ($3.5 million) — of which Rs 1.73 crore was the salary, Rs 2.43 crore was by way of benefits, perquisites and allowances, and Rs 25 crore were commissions.

LTIMindtree CEO Debashis Chatterjee, who was appointed to the post in November 2022 post the merger of L&T and Mindtree, drew Rs 17.5 crore ($2.1 million) in salary in FY22-23, a decline of 0.36 percent. Of this, Rs 8.5 crore was the fixed component, Rs 8.8 crore was variable pay, and Rs 16 lakh was by way of perquisites.

Tech Mahindra CEO CP Gurnani, who used to be among the highest paid CEOs in the industry, saw his pay halve in FY22-23 due to the fewer stock options exercised. Gurnani earned Rs 32 crore during this year. Of this, Rs 25 crore on account of ESOPs, Rs 2.7 crore as salary, and Rs 1.8 crore in commissions.

Median remuneration

There is also a yawning gap when it comes to CEO pay compared to the median remuneration at these companies.

Delaporte makes 916.12 times the median remuneration at his firm, Parekh 627 times, Gurnani 466.99 times, and Gopinathan 427.1 times. Vijayakumar makes 253.35 times the median remuneration at HCLTech, and Chatterjee 139.92 times.

IT CEO pay v/s median employee remuneration

Apart from median remuneration, the gap has also been widening when it comes to the pay of CEOs and freshers. In FY22, Moneycontrol reported that while the median annual pay of CEOs jumped 835 percent from Rs 3.37 crore in FY12 to Rs 31.5 crore in FY22, the median fresher package grew just 45 percent, from Rs 2.45 lakh to Rs 3.55 lakh, in the same time period.

The new guard in Indian IT

However, it’s been a year of change, with three new CEOs taking charge in 2023. Krithi Krithivasan took charge at TCS in June, and Mohit Joshi, Managing Director and CEO designate of Tech Mahindra, will take charge in December.

Krithivasan will be paid a basic salary of Rs 10 lakh per month, which can go up to a maximum of Rs 16 lakh per month, per the company’s annual report. However, his commission, which will make up a bigger chunk of his remuneration, is subject to company performance.

Joshi will receive an annual fixed compensation of Rs 6.5 crore (GBP 622,600), and an equal amount in annual variable pay. His variable pay in the first year is guaranteed. Additionally, he can get an annual overperformance bonus of up to 70 percent of his variable compensation.

He is also entitled to a joining bonus of $848,951 (Rs 6.96 crore). In addition, he will get one-time stock options worth $2.5 million (Rs 20.6 crore), 60 percent of which will vest once he finishes a year with the company, and the remaining when he finishes two years.

Further, he has stock options worth $3.5 million (Rs 28.8 crore) vesting in equal instalments over three consecutive years of employment, the first instalment vesting after the first year.

Cumulatively, Joshi stands to make a little over Rs 46 crore in his first year as CEO.

How this stacks up globally

Among the other leadership changes this year is the appointment of Ravi Kumar as Cognizant CEO in January. Cognizant was once the barometer of growth for the industry, and the gap in performance between Kumar’s former employer Infosys and Cognizant has been closing.

According to an exchange filing, Ravi Kumar will make an annual base salary of $1 million, annual cash incentive of $2 million, $4.6 million in RSUs vesting over a three-year period, and $6.9 million in performance-based stock units.

Apart from this, he received a sign-on bonus of $7,50,000, RSUs of a total of $5 million vesting in quarterly instalments from when he started, as well as performance units of up to $7.5 million measured over a four-year performance cycle.

In his first year, Kumar stands to make roughly $7 million (~Rs 57 crore) at the least from his annual base salary, RSUs as part of the new role, and his sign-on bonus.

The highest-paid executive is Accenture’s Julie Sweet, who took home $33 million in FY21-22, according to the company’s filings in December 2022 (Accenture’s fiscal year runs from September 1 to August 31). Of this, $25 million was in stock awards. With a cost of living adjustment for median remuneration, Sweet made 653 times the median income of an Accenture employee. Without the adjustment, it stands at 1,506.

IBM’s Arvind Krishna earned $16.58 million in 2022 — $1.5 million in base salary, $8.9 million in stock options, $8.93 million in RSUs and PSUs and $2.03 million in option awards. His annual incentives grew by more than $5,00,000 to $3.48 million. Krishna made 271 times the median remuneration at IBM.

Capgemini’s chief executive Aiman Ezzat earned $2.6 million in 2022. DXC Technology’s Michael Salvino earned $20.3 mn in the 2023 fiscal.