HCLTech CEO and Managing Director C Vijayakumar drew total remuneration of $18.13 million (about ₹175 crore) in financial year 2025-26 — a 66.9% jump over the prior year and roughly 292 times the median pay of the company's ~227,000 global employees, according to HCLTech's own annual report. That makes him the highest-paid chief executive among India's major IT services companies for the third year running. The gap inside the company is widening at the same time the median employee's pay rose just 5.4%.
The headline number is real, but the story behind it is mostly about stock options and long-term incentives, not a cash salary hike. Here is the verified breakdown, how HCLTech compares to TCS, Infosys, and Wipro, and why one viral protest at the company's 50th-anniversary event turned a pay-ratio statistic into a frontline workplace conversation.
Last verified: 2026-07-31
- CEO total remuneration FY26: $18.13M (~₹175 crore), up 66.9% YoY (HCLTech annual report, via PTI).
- CEO-to-median pay ratio: 291.9×; median employee pay rose 5.4% (Economic Times).
- Excluding LTI and exercised RSUs, the CEO's pay rose 22.86% — still far above the employee median.
- He is paid through HCL America Inc., a wholly owned US subsidiary, and is based in the United States.
- Pricing/compensation figures change annually — re-verify against the next annual report.
How much did HCLTech's CEO actually earn in FY26?
Vijayakumar's $18.13 million total remuneration for FY26 breaks down into five components, all figures from HCLTech's annual report as reported by PTI and the Economic Times:
| Component | Amount (USD) | Share of total |
|---|---|---|
| Base salary | $2.48M | ~14% |
| Performance-linked bonus | $2.00M | ~11% |
| Benefits and perquisites | $0.31M | ~2% |
| Long-term incentive (LTI) cash | $3.94M | ~22% |
| Perquisite value of exercised RSUs | $9.40M | ~52% |
| Total | $18.13M | 100% |
The key insight: over half the package is the perquisite value of Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) that vested and were exercised during the year, and another ~22% is a long-term incentive cash payout. Both are tied to multi-year performance, not a single-year salary increase. HCLTech itself noted in the report that excluding the LTI payout and the exercised-RSU perquisite value, the increase in Vijayakumar's remuneration would have been 22.86% — still a healthy raise, but a fraction of the 66.9% headline.
This is an important nuance the chant-and-viral-video framing misses: the "67% hike" is largely an accounting recognition of equity that was granted years earlier and finally vested, not a boardroom decision to double his cash pay overnight.
What is the CEO-to-median-employee pay ratio at HCLTech?
291.9 times. Vijayakumar's FY26 remuneration was 291.9 times the median remuneration of HCLTech's global workforce, per the annual report. (Most media rounded this to 292.) During the same year, the median employee's pay increased 5.4%.
A few specifics on how the median is calculated, again from the annual report as quoted by Business Today: HCLTech's workforce spans multiple countries, so the company converts every global employee's remuneration into INR using Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) conversion factors as of March 31, 2026, then takes the median. As of March 31, 2026, the company had 170,811 permanent employees at HCLTech plus 56,370 in subsidiaries — roughly 227,000 people total (PeopleMatters cites a June 30 headcount of ~227,181).
For context, the prior fiscal year (FY25) told a very different story. According to India Today's reporting on the FY25 annual report, Vijayakumar earned ₹94.6 crore that year — and his pay was 662.5 times the median employee's, while the median employee got a 3.1% raise (excluding top managers). So in FY26 the ratio actually narrowed from ~662× to ~292× — not because the CEO took a cut, but because median employee pay rose faster (5.4% vs 3.1%) while the CEO's total jumped largely on equity vesting.
How does HCLTech's CEO pay compare to TCS, Infosys, and Wipro?
Vijayakumar is the highest-paid CEO among India's top IT services firms for the third consecutive year, and the gap to his peers is large. All figures are FY26, from each company's annual report:
| Company | CEO | FY26 remuneration | YoY change |
|---|---|---|---|
| HCLTech | C Vijayakumar | ~₹175 crore ($18.13M) | +66.9% |
| Infosys | Salil Parekh | ₹82.60 crore | +2% |
| Wipro | Srinivas Pallia | ~₹49.64 crore ($5.29M) | — |
| TCS | K Krithivasan | ₹28 crore | +6.3% |
As Business Today noted, Vijayakumar's package is 2.1× Infosys's Salil Parekh, 2.6× Tech Mahindra's Mohit Joshi, 3.3× Wipro's Srinivas Pallia, and 6.2× TCS's K Krithivasan. He is based in the United States and paid through HCL America Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary — which means his compensation is dollar-denominated and structured around US market benchmarks, unlike his India-based peers. That structural difference, combined with a larger equity component, explains much of the gap.
Why did employees chant "We want hike" at HCLTech's 50th anniversary?
On July 27, 2026, a video from HCL Group's 50th-anniversary celebration in Chennai went viral. The event was part of a multi-city concert series for employees — the Chennai edition featured a private performance by musician Anirudh Ravichander, per Indian Express. The clip shows a large image of Vijayakumar on the venue's main screen, then cuts to him walking onto the stage. As he greets the crowd, a section of employees starts chanting "We want hike" — and the chants grow louder as he continues. Vijayakumar stayed composed, smiled, acknowledged the crowd, and carried on without directly responding, multiple outlets reported.
The protest landed days after HCLTech's FY26 annual report disclosed the 67% CEO pay jump and the 292× ratio — putting the pay structure "under a microscope it clearly wasn't built for," as one media summary put it. Reactions split two ways online (PeopleMatters rounded up both camps): one side saw employees raising a legitimate grievance about a widening gap; the other argued a celebratory company concert was the wrong venue and that pay concerns should go through internal HR channels.
HCLTech has not publicly responded to the viral video, Indian Express reported. The deeper signal: a milestone anniversary event — meant to celebrate 50 years — instead surfaced the gap between the corner office and the rest of the workforce, and it did so on camera.
What drives the growing CEO-to-worker pay gap in India's IT sector?
Three forces, which are worth separating:
Equity-linked pay dominates CEO packages. RSU vesting and LTI cash payouts are tied to multi-year performance and stock price. When a tranche vests in a single year, the reported pay spikes even though the grant was approved years earlier. This is why HCLTech explicitly disclosed the "ex-LTI/RSU" figure of 22.86% — the real underlying cash increase was much smaller than 66.9%.
Median employee pay is sticky. Across India's IT majors, employee raise pools have been in the single digits — 3-6% is typical. With inflation, that often means real wage growth for rank-and-file engineers is barely positive. Meanwhile, a CEO whose total package includes a vesting stock tranche can see the headline number grow 20-70% in a good year.
US-based CEOs benchmark against US pay. Vijayakumar and Wipro's Pallia are both paid in dollars through US subsidiaries, structuring their compensation against American market rates for large-cap tech CEOs — where eight- and nine-figure equity packages are normal. India-based CEOs like TCS's Krithivasan are paid in rupees against a domestic benchmark, so their totals are an order of magnitude smaller.
For a related look at how Indian IT is restructuring its workforce around AI rather than around headcount — and what that means for who gets hired next — see our analysis of what TCS's 600,000-agent plan means for enterprise IT.
What this means for you
If you work in India's IT sector: the pay-ratio number is striking, but read past the headline. A 67% CEO "hike" driven by RSU vesting is not the same as a 67% cash raise — and the ratio actually narrowed from 662× to 292× this year because median employee pay grew faster than the prior year. The real issue is the direction: median employee raises (5.4%) continue to barely outpace inflation while equity-heavy CEO packages swing wildly with the stock price. The "We want hike" chant resonated because it captured that direction, not just one year's number.
If you're a builder or operator: the same dynamic — equity concentration at the top, slow cash growth at the bottom — is not unique to HCLTech. It is the default compensation architecture of any large-cap tech company that competes for executive talent against US market rates. The lever employees actually control is skill leverage. As AI agents reshape which roles command premium pay, the workers who pair domain depth with AI-tool fluency move up the distribution; those who do not are the ones exposed to the 3% raise. Our breakdown of the developer skills gap in 2026 maps exactly where that line is being drawn.
If you're a small-business owner: you will never have a 292× pay ratio — but you will face the same trade-off between investing in a few high-leverage roles and raising pay broadly. The honest lesson from the HCLTech data is that perceived fairness matters as much as the math: a company that grows revenue 11% and net profit falls 4% while the CEO package jumps 67% (even on equity vesting) creates a trust deficit that costs more than any single raise would. For a structured way to turn that lesson into an employee-retention playbook, see how to build an AI follow-up cadence with an approval gate — the same gating principle applies to comp reviews and feedback loops.
If you care about the policy angle: India's Employment Linked Incentive (ELI) scheme — a ₹1 lakh crore plan to tie employer incentives to new hires — is the government's bet that structural wage growth comes from expanding the payroll, not from regulating the ratio. Our guide to the ELI scheme covers how it works and who it actually benefits.
FAQ
Q: How much is HCLTech CEO C Vijayakumar's pay in FY26? A: $18.13 million (about ₹175 crore) in FY2025-26, a 66.9% increase year-on-year, per HCLTech's annual report. The jump was driven mainly by exercised RSUs ($9.40M) and a long-term incentive cash payout ($3.94M). Excluding those two equity-linked components, the increase was 22.86%.
Q: What is the CEO-to-median-employee pay ratio at HCLTech? A: 291.9× in FY26 — Vijayakumar's remuneration was 291.9 times the median pay of HCLTech's ~227,000 global employees. The median employee's pay rose 5.4% the same year. The ratio is calculated using PPP-adjusted INR conversions of all global employees' pay as of March 31, 2026.
Q: Is the 67% increase a cash salary hike? A: No. Only ~14% of the package ($2.48M) is base salary. Over half ($9.40M) is the perquisite value of RSUs exercised in the year, and ~22% ($3.94M) is a long-term incentive cash payout — both tied to multi-year performance. HCLTech disclosed that excluding the LTI and RSU value, the year-on-year increase was 22.86%.
Q: How does HCLTech's CEO pay compare to TCS, Infosys, and Wipro? A: Vijayakumar's ~₹175 crore is the highest among India's top IT CEOs for the third year running — 2.1× Infosys's Salil Parekh (₹82.6 crore), 3.3× Wipro's Srinivas Pallia (~₹49.6 crore), and 6.2× TCS's K Krithivasan (₹28 crore). He is based in the US and paid through HCL America Inc., which benchmarks his package against US market rates.
Q: What happened at HCLTech's 50th-anniversary event? A: At the Chennai leg of HCL's 50th-anniversary concert series on July 27, 2026, a section of employees chanted "We want hike" as CEO C Vijayakumar walked onto the stage. The clip went viral on social media. HCLTech has not publicly responded. The protest followed the disclosure of the 67% CEO pay increase in the FY26 annual report.
Q: Is the CEO-to-worker pay ratio widening or narrowing at HCLTech? A: It actually narrowed from ~662× in FY25 to ~292× in FY26 — because median employee pay rose faster (5.4% vs 3.1% the prior year) while the CEO's total jumped on equity vesting. But the long-term direction is still a wide gap: most employee raises remain in single digits while equity-heavy CEO packages swing 20-70% in good vesting years.
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