Infosys CEO’s Pay Soars to ₹80.62 Cr—752 Times the Median Employee Salary

Infosys CEO Salil Parekh saw his compensation rise 21.7% to ₹806.2 million ($9.44 million) in the last fiscal year, making him one of the highest-paid IT executives in India said a Reuters report. The increase was largely due to stock options exercised during the year, which accounted for ₹495 million of his total pay.

Parekh’s pay is 752 times the median salary of an Infosys employee, reflecting the growing gap between executive and employee compensation in India's IT sector. His earnings are largely driven by stock options, similar to global trends.

Despite this, Infosys reported 4.2% revenue growth in constant currency terms, falling short of its 4.5%-5% forecast, signaling a weaker business environment. The Indian IT sector, valued at $283 billion, continues to face challenges, including U.S. tariff policies affecting market conditions.

For comparison, TCS CEO K Krithivasan earned $3.11 million, while Wipro CEO Srinivas Pallia received $6.28 million in the same period. Infosys remains one of the few top IT firms to retain its CEO over the past 18-24 months, alongside HCLTech.

Here's how Infosys CEO's compensation compares to other top Indian CEOs:

• Ravi Kumar S (Cognizant) – ₹186 crore ($22.2 million), the highest-paid Indian-origin IT executive.
• Vinay Prakash (Adani Enterprises) – ₹89.37 crore ($10.6 million).
• Nithin Kamath (Zerodha) – ₹72 crore ($8.5 million).
• S.N. Subrahmanyan (Larsen & Toubro) – ₹61.27 crore ($7.3 million).
• K Krithivasan (TCS) – ₹26.52 crore ($3.1 million)
• Srinivas Pallia (Wipro) – ₹6.28 million ($6.2 million).

Parekh’s pay is competitive within India’s IT sector but remains modest compared to global tech giants. His compensation structure is largely driven by stock options, similar to international norms.

For comparison:

• Apple CEO Tim Cook earned $63.2 million in 2024, including stock awards.
• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella received $48.5 million in total compensation.
• Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai earned $226 million in 2023, largely due to stock grants.
• Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar S was the highest-paid IT executive among Indian-origin leaders, earning ₹186 crore ($22.2 million) in FY24.

10 Indian CEOs Named in the World's Most-Influential CEOs List of 2019

Richest Indian Mukesh Ambani, Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) Chairman Sanjiv Singh and ONGC head Shashi Shanker are among the 10 Indian CEOs named in the CEOWORLD magazine's global ranking of the world's most-influential chief executives in 2019.

ArcelorMittal Chairman and CEO Lakshmi Mittal is the highest-ranked Indian CEO but the ranking lists his company as a Luxembourg-based firm.

While Reliance Industries Chairman and Managing Director Ambani was ranked 49th on the list, Singh was ranked 69th. Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) Chairman and Managing Director Shashi Shanker was ranked 77th in the list of 121, according to the list published by the magazine.

Other Indian CEOs on the list included State Bank of India (SBI) Chairman Rajnish Kumar (ranked 83th), Tata Motors CEO Guenter Butschek (89th), BPCL Chairman and Managing Director D Rajkumar (94th), Rajesh Exports Executive Chairman Rajesh Mehta (99th), Tata Consultancy Services CEO Rajesh Gopinathan and Wipro Chief Executive Abidali Z Neemuchwala (ranked 118th).

Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan retweeted a link of the CEO ranking.

"Unsurprisingly, Walmart CEO Douglas McMillon came first in the CEOWORLD magazine's global ranking of the best chief executives across all industries for 2019," the publication said. "He is followed by Royal Dutch Shell's global chief executive Ben van Beurden, and ArcelorMittal Chairman and CEO Lakshmi Mittal."

Saudi Aramco CEO Amin H Nasser is ranked No. 4.

"Sanjiv Singh, @ChairmanIOCL, makes it to the 100 most influential Chief Executives across industries as per @ceoworld magazine," IOC tweeted. ONGC also tweeted, saying, "Shashi Shanker, @CMD_ONGC, makes it to the 100 Most Influential Chief Executives across industries as per @ceoworld magazine."

The 2019 rankings placed BP's chief executive, Bob Dudley in fifth ahead of ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods into sixth; while Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess ranked seventh, and Toyota Chief Executive Akio Toyoda eighth.

Overall, among the top-10 most influential CEOs in the world 2019, the ninth and 10th positions are held by Apple CEO Tim Cook and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffet.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos took the No. 11 spot, followed by the UnitedHealth Group CEO David Wichmann (No.12) and Samsung Electronics Chief Executive Kim Ki-Nam (No.13).

Out of 121 best CEOs in the world 2019, Chevron CEO Michael K Wirth ranked No. 20th, it added.

"CEOWORLD magazine's global ranking of the best chief executives for 2019 measured more than 1,200 CEOs across 96 countries. Taking a long view of business performance, the methodology is primarily based on the financial returns for the CEO's entire tenure, which makes up 60 per cent of the final ranking, as opposed to stock price and the current quarter's numbers," the publication said.

To calculate the final position, the additional 40 per cent of a CEO's ranking factors in a company's track record on environmental, governance, and social issues, as well as market shares, change of market capitalisation, and brand's newsworthiness and the impact was taken, it added. PTI ANZ

After Shared Offices, Its Shared CEOs, CFOs Called "Fractional CXO"

Necessity is the mother of all inventions. So, when the startup scene started booming in India and people realised that their small budgets and the space crunch in the country didn’t allow them to have their individual spaces early on in the game, they decided to share their space with their peers, and the concept of co-working spaces was born. And now it comes to light that another sharing concept is taking flight in the ecosystem. Startups in India are now reportedly sharing sharing top executives so as to save costs.

Take the example of 51-years old Sridhar Subramanian for instance. Having had over two decades of experience working in the finance sector, with big shot companies like working Coca-Cola and 3M, he has now decided to take on task of serving as a “fractional” CEO for a number of startups. Subramanian is the go-to person for these startups when it comes to anything associated with accounting or managing compliance. Every now and then, he also help them in structuring their plans.

When asked about what he does as a fractional CEO and why he does it, Subramanian said, "My work is mostly need-based since these companies do not have a constant flow of work. It is financially rewarding and more challenging to do this.”

Startups that are just starting up need as much guidance and help as possible, but their pockets don’t allow them to go out in the corporate world and hire someone full-time, this is where fractional CXOs come in and help fill in their void. While startups get expert advice and save cost at the same time, these fractional CXOs earn good cash and put their time to better usage. Chennai-based OrangeScape, which provides a cloud platform to build applications, has been availing Subramanian’s services as a virtual CFO for about a year now.

Speaking about the arrangement, Suresh Sambandam, co-founder of OrangeScape said, "We don't have enough work for a full-time CFO as of now. We have finance folks who manage the book-keeping. What we need is a person who makes sure that the obvious things are being done and who can advise us on financial decision making.” Subramanian helps OrangeScape by giving them expert advice on how to deploy excess cash, prepare banks documents, and how to make strategic decisions.

Sectors such as finance, marketing, strategy and sales are some of the most famous sector among fractional chiefs right now.

One of the biggest advantages that fractional chiefs have working multiple jobs is that they get to apply their learnings from one startup to another. Since they’re into the startup ecosystem with multiple organisations all at once, they catch a drift of where the trends, markets and the consumers are heading. According to Masroor Lodhi, who’s currently working with as many as ten startups, "There are soft learnings that you can apply irrespective of the nature of business. How one founder was able to manoeuvre a roadblock, how a founder is setting the culture of the company, or something as fundamental as using a tool to facilitate team dynamics - these aspects are applicable across startups.”

However, everything isn’t as rosy as it seems. There might be times when issues such as conflict of interests or confidentiality might arise. This is where the trust factor comes in the picture. Considering today’s competitive world, many startups now have a confidentiality clause in their contracts for their fractional/virtual chiefs.

According to Sanjay Swamy, managing partner in Prime Venture Partners, while the concept of virtual/fractional chiefs sounds good on paper, there are certain areas where the startups shouldn’t try this method. One of them being a fractional CEO. "Ideally, a founder should be CEO. At Prime, we are happiest if founders scale and learn the ropes of becoming long-term CEOs, as the company progresses. The founder and CEO is the one who brings the passion for the business and is often the first and primary sales person too," he says.

While right now people might have different opinions on in which areas should the concept be allowed, but one thing is for sure, the trend is going to live and flourish in years to come. HR experts believe that fractional work will be the trend going forward. According to James Agrawal, MD of executive search and leadership development firm BTI Consultants, people no longer want to be tied to a single organisation or be committed full-time. Hence, we might soon find a growing number of people flashing the title of fractional CEOs or CFOs on their business cards.

This development was first reported in the Economic Times.

[Image: Diligent Cxo]

Helpshift Ropes In Former Salesforce Veteran Linda Crawford As CEO

Customer support platform Helpshift has appointed Linda Crawford, Salesforce veteran executive as the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the company. Crawford will take the helm immediately, while founder and current CEO Abinash Tripathy will become Helpshift’s Chief Strategy Officer.

In her new role, Crawford aims to help drive the company’s next stage of growth, leveraging her experience to rapidly scale the company to fulfill the need for the next generation of customer support.

Speaking on her role, Linda said, “I couldn’t be more excited to join Helpshift as the CEO. Joining Helpshift was an easy decision. Helpshift is solving something big, something disruptive: meeting customers wherever they are and providing instantaneous conversational help.”

Adding further she said, “I can’t believe that I’ve been in the CRM business since 1996. As I look back over those twenty plus years, I’m proud of our industry for making improvements in customer service for business to business. But, what about us as consumers??? I don’t know about you, but I dread calling, emailing or chatting with the vendors when I’m the consumer. For the first time, we have the technology platform, the data and the software to make sure no customer feels like a case number when they need help.”

Helpshift looked at servicing consumers from their point of view. Consumer first. That means mobile – in an app or mobile web. It means massive scalability to collect valuable data to provide proactive and personalized support. Knowing that consumers don’t want to call or email or chat meant a messaging-first approach.

Helpshift is off to a great start, with over 600 million users being supported with their technology every month. “We are just at the beginning of our journey. My plan is to help Helpshift grow like the business I oversaw for Salesforce: Sales Cloud Products. As the Executive Vice President & Cloud CEO of that division grew the business from $1B to $2B in three years. We grew the customer base to 150,000+ customers and 2,500,000+ users,” said Crawford.

Founded in 2010 by Abinash Tripathy and Baishampayan Ghose, Helpshift is based out of Pune. The platform helps companies to engage their customers with their apps through targeted push campaigns, and proactively avoid any in-app frustration through native FAQs and In-App Messaging.

The genius of Helpshift comes from incredible team, Abinash Tripathy, Helpshift’s co-founder and now Chief Strategy Officer, Baishampayan Ghose co-founder and CTO, Tushar Makhija VP of Sales & Success and Pradeep Jindal VP of Engineering. Together they will drive Helpshift’s next stage of growth to change customer service forever.