At Rs 66.25 crore, Infosys' Salil Parekh is second-highest paid IT CEO

Delaporte's successor Srinivas Pallia will receive remuneration of about Rs 50 crore in FY25. TCS CEO and managing director K Krithivasan drew Rs 25.36 cr in annual compensation during FY24

Salil Parekh, chief executive officer and managing director of Infosys, has emerged as the Indian IT sector’s second-highest paid CEO with an annual compensation of Rs 66.25 crore during FY24, the company’s latest annual report revealed.

The highest paid CEO during the last financial year was Wipro’s former chief Thierry Delaporte, who earned $20 million (about Rs 166 crore).

Delaporte’s successor Srinivas Pallia will receive remuneration of about Rs 50 crore in FY25. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) CEO and managing director K Krithivasan drew Rs 25.36 crore in annual compensation during FY24, the lowest among the large IT companies.

Of the Rs 66.25 crore compensation for FY24, Parekh earned Rs 7 crore in base pay, Rs 47 lakh as retiral benefits, and Rs 7.47 crore as variable pay or bonus. Parekh earned Rs 39.03 crore by exercising his restricted stock units (RSUs).

In a letter to shareholders, Parekh said that during FY24, the company’s relentless focus on execution enabled it to deliver growth and operating margin resilience.

“We generated $2.9 billion of free cash flow. We worked closely with our clients on their cost, efficiency, automation, and consolidation programmes to generate $17.7 billion of large deals, the highest we have had annually, which showcases the relevance of our service offerings for clients,” Parekh said.

“Over the past five years, from financial year 2020 to 2024 we have returned 85 per cent of free cash flow to you, our shareholders, as per our capital allocation policy, which is a return of $2.3 billion to shareholders,” he added.

Parekh said during FY24, Infosys recruited nearly 11,900 college graduates and ended the year with over 3,17,000 employees. “Our attrition reduced to 12.6 per cent. We trained over 2,50,000 employees on AI skills. Our focus on gender diversity continues with about 39 per cent of our workforce consisting of women employees,” he said.