HCLTech CEO earns ₹175 crore in FY26 as pay rises 67%

HCLTech Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director C Vijayakumar received total remuneration of $18.13 million (around ₹175 crore) in the financial year 2025-26, a 66.9% increase from the previous year, according to the company's latest annual report.

The sharp rise was largely driven by long-term incentives and exercised Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) rather than fixed salary. The remuneration also places Vijayakumar at the top of the compensation rankings among chief executives of India's major IT services companies.

Stock rewards drove the increase

According to HCLTech's annual report, Vijayakumar, who is based in the United States and receives his salary through the company's wholly owned subsidiary HCL America Inc., received compensation across multiple components.

His FY26 remuneration included:

• Base salary: $2.48 million
• Performance-linked bonus: $2 million
• Benefits and perquisites: $0.31 million
• Long-term incentive (LTI) cash component: $3.94 million
• Perquisite value of exercised Restricted Stock Units (RSUs): $9.40 million

The company said the LTI payout and exercised RSUs accounted for the majority of the increase in Vijayakumar's overall remuneration.

Without these two components, his total remuneration would have increased by 22.86%, the annual report noted.

Highest-paid among Indian IT peers

Vijayakumar's compensation significantly exceeded that of his counterparts at other large Indian IT companies during FY26.

According to their respective annual reports:

• TCS CEO and MD K Krithivasan earned ₹28 crore, up 6.3% from the previous year.
• Infosys CEO Salil Parekh received ₹82.60 crore, reflecting a 2% increase.
• Wipro CEO Srinivas Pallia earned $5.29 million, approximately ₹49.64 crore.

The figures place Vijayakumar as the highest-paid CEO among India's leading IT services companies for the financial year.

CEO pay and employee remuneration

The annual report also highlighted the gap between executive and employee compensation.

Vijayakumar's remuneration was 291.9 times the median remuneration of HCLTech's global workforce during FY26.

At the same time, the median remuneration of HCLTech employees increased by 5.4% during the financial year.

As of 31 March, the company employed:

• 170,811 permanent employees at HCLTech.
• 56,370 employees across its subsidiaries.

Financial performance in FY26

The remuneration disclosure comes alongside mixed financial results for the company.

For FY26:

• Revenue increased 11.18% to ₹130,144 crore.
• Net profit declined 4.30% to ₹16,642 crore, compared with ₹17,390 crore in FY25.

The annual report attributes the increase in the CEO's compensation primarily to long-term incentive payouts and exercised equity awards, underscoring the growing role of performance-linked and stock-based compensation in executive pay structures across the technology sector.