The annual compensation of Infosys Ltd.’s Chief Executive Officer Salil Parekh dropped by a fifth in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2023.
This was still 627 times the average Infosys salary.
In comparison, the median Infosys salary was Rs 9 lakh.
Total remuneration of Rs 56.44 crore in FY23, as against Rs 71 crore in the previous financial year.
That was primarily due to the fact that he exercised fewer restricted stock units during the fiscal.
CEOs not the highest paid
Further, the company had at least 125 employees who drew an annual compensation in excess of Rs 1 crore.
One might think the CEO would be the highest paid but this is not so.
Outgoing President Mohit Joshi, who is set to take over as Tech Mahindra Ltd.’s CEO in December, took home a total of Rs 57.32 crore.
IT rivals and how they fared
Coming in later was Nandan Nilekani, co-founder and executive chairman at Infosys who chose not to receive any compensation for the full year.
He was succeeded by Thierry Delaporte, the CEO of crosstown rival Wipro Ltd. Delaporte earned $10 million (about Rs 82.5 crore) in FY23.
He was trailed by Wipro Chairman Rishad Premji who saw his compensation reduced by half to Rs 7.8 crore.
Financial Performance
In his letter to shareholders, Parekh warned of global headwinds impacting business, but “our strength in digital, cloud and automation, along with cost efficiencies, have held us in good stead”.
Revenue grew 20.7% over the year ago to Rs 1.46 lakh crore in FY23.
That, when net profit expanded 8.9% year-on-year to Rs 24,108 crore.
The company now has 40 clients that bring in over $100 million in annual revenue, 75 worth over $50 million.
Recruitment
Speaking about recruitment, Parekh said, “We recruited over 50,000 college graduates in the year and ended the year with more than 3,40,000 employees. At the end of the year, 39% of our employees were women.”
Nilekani said in the annual report, “Our CEO, Salil Parekh, and his global leadership team, realised early on the value that the advanced digital technologies like AI and cloud, and more recently, generative AI, can bring to imagine and execute for multiple options in the future.”
He continued, “Today, Infosys is steadily progressing towards a future where we don’t just solve immediate business problems, but continually innovate and architect for challenges that may emerge in the future.
We build it for ourselves first, and then take it widely to our clients.”
