At a time when automation is steadily eating into jobs and revenues are slowing across the Indian IT sector, chief executives continue to draw exorbitant pay packages, many of which rise year after year.
C Vijayakumar is reportedly walking away with the biggest paycheque among his peers in the country’s top IT firms. While the HCLTech CEO is already the highest-paid executive among the top five such companies at ₹94 crore, his remuneration is expected to go even higher.
Starting September 1, as he begins a third term as CEO and MD, he will draw an annual salary of ₹154 crore (~$18.6 million)—a staggering 71% jump over his current compensation.
Moreover, over the next five years, Vijayakumar is also set to receive long-term incentives worth $8.82 million, linked to the company’s business performance.
The announcement comes as HCLTech, which posted 4.3% revenue growth to $13.8 billion in FY25, continues to outpace its peers. This marks the company’s second consecutive year as the fastest-growing IT firm among the top five Indian players. On the AI front, the company has also formed a partnership with OpenAI, which distinguishes it from its peers.
The board attributed Vijayakumar’s reappointment to his “superior financial execution” and “commitment to long-term value creation”.
Meanwhile, TCS is trimming its workforce by 2% and Infosys has projected its slowest growth in a decade. The $283 billion IT sector is undergoing a period of transition, and not every player is making it through with equal success.
Among the leaders, Infosys CEO Salil Parekh ranks next after Vijayakumar, earning ₹80.62 crore following a 22% pay hike. He oversees a considerably larger company, generating $19.28 billion in revenue.
In contrast, despite heading India’s largest IT firm with $30.18 billion in revenue, TCS boss K Krithivasan is the lowest-paid CEO among the top five players, drawing ₹26.5 crore.
Wipro’s Srinivas Pallia and Tech Mahindra’s Mohit Joshi each took home roughly ₹54 crore in annual pay, with Joshi standing out as the youngest among the lot at 51.
Notably, the executives’ stock holdings reveal another layer of disparity. Parekh’s stake in Infosys is valued at approximately ₹175 crore, while Vijayakumar’s HCLTech shares are worth around ₹98 crore. Krithivasan’s holdings in TCS amount to just ₹3.4 crore, considering that the company does not offer ESOPs.
The Mid-Cap Millions
The spotlight is increasingly turning to mid-sized IT companies, not solely for their growth. Their CEOs are quietly emerging as some of the highest-paid leaders in the sector.
At the top of that list is Sandeep Kalra, CEO of Persistent Systems, who earned ₹148 crore in FY25, narrowly behind Vijayakumar. The bulk of his compensation came from a one-time stock grant issued at the time of his appointment. Yet, even excluding this, his salary is significantly higher than that of several CEOs running much larger firms.
Close on his heels is Sudhir Singh of Coforge, whose FY25 compensation totals ₹105 crore—more than double the compensation of the TCS chief. Coforge has had a breakout year—revenues are up, profits have doubled, and its AI-first strategy is being rewarded on the bourses and at the boardroom table.
Nitin Rakesh, the long-time CEO of Mphasis, earned ₹59.2 crore this year, slightly ahead of his peers at Wipro and Tech Mahindra. His pay package includes a mix of long-term incentives and bonuses tied to new deal wins and operating margins.
Amit Chadha, CEO of L&T Technology Services (LTTS), drew ₹18.1 crore. While modest in this context, it’s still up from the previous year and includes a healthy mix of salary, bonus and stock grants, especially notable in a year when LTTS reported only flat profit growth despite strong revenues.
Not far away in the rankings is Samir Dhir, CEO of Sonata Software, who took home ₹14.3 crore—modest when compared to the others, but reflective of the company’s current scale. Sonata has made strides in product engineering and digital transformation, and Dhir’s pay has been aligned with targets set during the firm’s recent pivot towards platform-led offerings.
In the business process management space, WNS Holdings’ Keshav Murugesh earned ₹22.8 crore this year, making him one of the most well-compensated leaders in the non-IT services space. His package reflects both longevity and consistent delivery in a segment of the tech industry that rarely commands the spotlight.
Worker Pay Tells Another Story
While executive compensation packages hit record highs, employee salaries tell a more complicated story. HCLTech did raise its median employee salary by 17.63% in FY25, up from 7% the previous year. But at Wipro and Tech Mahindra, median pay actually dropped, citing revenue dips and headcount reduction.
TCS, which employs over six lakh people, granted a 7.5% raise, down from last year’s 9%. Infosys offered a 9.63% increase.
On the other hand, Tech Mahindra, which saw a revenue dip of 0.21%, slashed median salaries by more than 6%, while Wipro cut overall employee compensation by 0.6%.
The numbers reveal a clear and growing divergence: top executives are being rewarded as if they’re in a bull market, while much of the workforce is working through a slowdown. For an industry built on the strength of its talent, the message is hard to miss—AI may be the new engine, but the rewards are being driven to the front of the plane.
That wave is lifting the boardroom a lot higher than the rest.
The post Indian IT CEOs Keep Getting Richer, Even in the Mid-Tier appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.
