Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar's annual pay up 11% at $16.1 million in 2024

Cognizant chief executive Ravi Kumar received annual compensation of $16.1 million for 2024, up 11 per cent from a year-ago period. In 2023, Kumar's total compensation was $22.6 million due to an elevated one-time award granted upon his appointment as CEO, said the company in a regulatory filing.

 

“Kumar’s realised compensation was significantly lower than his target direct compensation primarily because his 2024 PSU grants are scheduled to vest, subject to the satisfaction of performance criteria, in future periods. His 2024 realised compensation consisted principally of his base salary, 2024 ACI award payout at 107.3 per cent of target, and quarterly vestings of RSUs in the aggregate amount of approximately $4.49 million,” the proxy statement said.

 

Kumar and Dalal, along with John Kim, chief legal officer; Surya Gummadi, president of the Americas business; and Ganesh Ayyar, president of intuitive operations and automation and industry solutions, are the five top-compensated executives in the Nasdaq-listed company.

 

Dalal, the long-time CFO with Wipro, saw his salary zoom to $750,000 from about $60,000 a year earlier. He received $150,000 as bonus in 2024, similar to 2023, as part of the $300,000 sign-on bonus when he joined in December 2023. His stock awards jumped to $7.7 million from $3.07 million.

 

The board said it has full faith in its chief executive as he tries to steer the company from years of underperformance to his stated goal of becoming one of the top four IT services players by 2027.

 

“The board is pleased with the traction the company is gaining since Ravi Kumar joined as CEO in early 2023 and its strategy to capture the significant opportunity ahead with the next wave of enterprise transformation led by generative AI.”

 

The pay ratio of CEO to median employees was 378:1, down from 556:1 a year earlier. The median pay of employees has risen to about $44,500 from $40,660 in the same period.

 

Kumar, on his part, said the future of IT services will be defined by two unique opportunities: AI driving hyperproductivity and automation, and embedded engineering making our physical world intelligent, connected and autonomous.

 

“We see AI-enabled opportunities in three vectors: hyperproductivity, industrialising AI and agentification. We see the market growing as these vectors layer, accelerating our momentum and unlocking new market opportunities. In 2025, we will stay focused on accelerating growth, investing in talent, scaling innovation and shaping the AI- and embedded engineering-driven future for enterprises worldwide,” he wrote to shareholders in the latest annual report.

 

As of December, the company had about 336,800 employees, with 241,500 in India and 42,800 in North America.