Bengaluru: HCLTech CEO C Vijayakumar retained his position as the highest-paid chief executive among India’s top IT companies for the third year in a row. His total remuneration jumped nearly 67% to $18.3 million (about Rs 177 crore) in FY26, according to the company’s annual report.Vijayakumar’s compensation was more than double that of Infosys CEO Salil Parekh, over six times that of TCS CEO K Krithivasan and more than three-and-a-half times Wipro CEO Srini Pallia’s pay, further widening the compensation gap at the top of India’s $315-billion IT services industry.Among its peers, Infosys’ Salil Parekh earned Rs 82.5 crore in FY26, up 2.5% from a year earlier. TCS’ Krithivasan received Rs 28 crore, a 6.3% increase over the previous year, while Wipro’s Srini Pallia earned about Rs 49.2 crore, down 14.5% from $6.2 million in FY25.Vijayakumar’s remuneration comprised a base salary of $2.4 million, a $2 million performance-linked bonus, a $3.9 million cash component of long-term incentives (LTI), $9.4 million representing the perquisite value of restricted stock units (RSUs) exercised during FY26, and $0.3 million in benefits, perquisites and allowances. For FY26, HCLTech reported a 3.9% rise in revenue in constant currency. In dollar terms, revenue grew 6% to $14.6 billion.The sharp increase was driven largely by deferred incentive payouts rather than annual salary revisions. HCLTech said the $2 million performance-linked bonus paid in FY26 related to Vijayakumar’s performance in FY25. In addition, long-term incentives linked to his performance in FY24 and FY25 vested during the year, significantly boosting his overall compensation.Vijayakumar is based in the US and draws his remuneration from HCL America, a step-down wholly owned subsidiary of HCLTech. For statutory disclosures, the company converted his compensation into rupees using the applicable US-India purchasing power parity (PPP) conversion factor before comparing it with the median remuneration of its global workforce.HCLTech said Vijayakumar’s remuneration was 291.9 times the median remuneration of its global employees.The company said the median remuneration of employees increased 5.4% during FY26, while the average salary increase for employees other than managerial personnel was 2.9%. HCLTech had 170,811 permanent employees on its standalone rolls and another 56,370 employees across subsidiaries as of March 31, taking its global workforce to more than 227,000.
