TCS CEO K Krithivasan earned Rs 25.36 crore in FY24

TCS CEO and MD K Krithivasan.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) CEO and MD K Krithivasan drew Rs 25.36 crore in annual compensation in the financial year 2023-24, which is the lowest amongst the large IT companies.

Krithivasan’s compensation included basic salary, benefits, perquisites and allowances, and commission. He received a commission of Rs 21 crore in FY24, the IT services company’s annual report said.

The compensation does not include the employee stock purchase scheme (ESPS). He holds around 11,232 stocks in the company.

In FY22-23, Infosys’ CEO Salil Parekh earned the most amongst IT company CEOs – at Rs 56 crore annual remuneration package. This was followed by the newly appointed Wipro CEO Srinivas Pallia, whose annual remuneration package is approximately Rs 50 crore.

Also read: At Rs 50 crore, Wipro’s Pallia becomes the second-highest paid CEO in industry

The next-best paid CEO of an IT company is C Vijayakumar of HCLTech, earning Rs 28.4 crore in FY22-FY23. Tech Mahindra’s Mohit Joshi's annual fixed compensation is Rs 6.5 crore and an equal amount in annual variable pay in FY22-23.

Krithivasan took over as the CEO from Rajesh Gopinathan on June 1, 2023. In his brief two-month stint, Gopinathan earned Rs 1.1 crore before his resignation. In FY23, the former TCS CEO and MD drew Rs 29.16 crore in remuneration, a 13 percent YoY jump from Rs 25.75 crore.

Gopinathan was paid a basic salary of Rs 3.36 crore, with benefits, perquisites and allowances stacking up to Rs 7.68 crore.

Outgoing Chief Operating Officer NG Subramaniam earned Rs 26.18 crore in FY24, an 8.2 percent increase from the previous year. Of this, Rs 21 crore was the commission while the rest salary and benefits.

Subramaniam earned more than Krithivasan in FY24, however, the CEO's salary was for 10 months as the COO's was for the full year.

Also read: TCS CEO says won't appoint a COO after NG Subramaniam retires in May

Subramaniam made 346.2 times the median remuneration. He held 1,97,760 shares in the company, the same as the previous year.

Key focus area: Gen AI

In his letter to the shareholders, Krithivasan said the company is exploring innovative uses of Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI), which continues to be a key focus area. He said TCS is helping its customers to use AI in three ways.

Firstly, assisting in leveraging AI to supplement tacit knowledge with contextual knowledge to boost work effectiveness. Secondly, augmenting and accelerating performance through collaborative intelligence, where humans and machines complement and magnify each other. And lastly, transforming and leaping to a knowledge-driven superstructure with fast, consistent, and high-quality decision output.

Krithivasan further said a large talent pool trained AI/machine learning, Gen AI, and partnerships have given TCS a head start in being a partner in customers’ technology adoption journey.

“Many of our clients who are early adopters have begun experimentation and exploration on various use cases of GenAI, with our help,” said Krithivasan. “Although still in the early stages of adoption, the use of GenAI is expected to transform every industry.”

On the business environment, Krithivasan highlighted that in FY24 customers continued reprioritisation of projects in favour of those that are considered business-critical and where return realisation is likely faster.

Also read: There is a greater opportunity to increase pricing: TCS CEO K Krithivasan

He said while transformation remains a key ask, customers are expecting the same to be funded through savings from operations. “Hence, the key engagement themes we saw during the year were around cost optimisation and cloud transformation,” Krithivasan further said in the letter.

Demand was mainly led by vendor consolidation, cloud migration and transformation, customer, and employee experience enhancement, among others.

Talking about cloud, he said clients see it as a strategy for business transformation and growth. “Hybrid, multi-cloud platforms are now becoming mainstream. Cloud adoption is a catalyst for innovation and a strategy for business and growth itself,” he said.

Also read: GenAI technologies to boost every sector and country going forward: TCS chairman N Chandrasekaran