IT ceo salary: Some IT midcap CEOs earn more than counterparts at larger companies

Chief executives of Coforge and Persistent Systems earned more than their counterparts in TCS and Infosys in the last financial year as some Indian midcap IT firms are paying top dollar to their CEOs who are growing their business despite headwinds from multiple directions.

Coforge CEO Sudhir Singh’s annual remuneration jumped three times in FY24 to more than $12.5 million (Rs 105.12 crore), making him the second-highest paid Indian IT firm CEO last financial year, trailing only former Wipro CEO Thierry Delaporte.

Other midcap IT firm CEOs like Nitin Rakesh of Mphasis and Sandeep Kalra of Persistent Systems earned Rs 44.13 crore ($5.2 million) and Rs 77.1 crore ($9.1 million), respectively, in FY24, according to the companies’ annual reports.

This made them the sixth and fourth highest paid IT CEOs in the country, respectively, ahead of K Krithivasan, chief executive of the country’s largest IT firm TCS, who earned Rs 25.2 crore ($3 million) in FY24.

It is to be noted that Krithivasan assumed his charge in June 2023.

While Delaporte’s $20 million (Rs 166 crore) compensation for FY24 was the highest in FY24 for any India-based IT firm, HCLTech CEO C Vijayakumar’s annual compensation of $10.06 million (Rs 84.17 crore) took him to the third place.

Salil Parekh, chief executive of Infosys, earned Rs 66 crore ($7.8 million), placing him at the fifth place in the pecking order.

Debashis Chatterjee, CEO of the country’s sixth largest IT firm LTIMindtree, took home Rs 19.34 crore ($2.3 million) in total compensation in FY24.

Coforge, which filed its annual report last week, said its CEO’s remuneration increased 209.63% in FY24 compared to FY23, largely because of stock options that were worth over Rs 88.55 crore. While his salary and allowance were Rs 5.7 crore, the contribution to provident fund and superannuation fund or annuity fund was around Rs 5.4 crore and performance-linked bonus came to Rs 5.4 crore.

The firm also said the current term of Sudhir Singh as executive director shall expire on January 28, 2025, and that the company’s board of directors had in May approved his re-appointment as executive director for five years from January 29, 2025, up to January 28, 2030.

Under Singh’s leadership, Coforge crossed the $1-billion-revenue mark in FY23 and the company has grown from Rs 2,802 crore ($417 million) in revenues in FY17 to Rs 9,179 crore ($1.12 billion) in FY24, with CAGR growth of 18.5%. Its profit after tax kept pace with CAGR growth of 18.2% in the last seven years while “the shareholder’s value has increased by a CAGR of 44%,” the company said.

Coforge said it is looking to carve out new verticals for its portfolio and the first addition in FY25 could be “public services (outside India).”

“Retail, hi-tech technology, and healthcare are the other verticals that the company could add going forward,” the company said in its annual report.