Infosys Chief Executive Salil Parekh earned Rs 82.6 crore (about $9.7 million) in fiscal 2026, a 2.5 percent rise on the previous year, according to the company’s annual report. Most of that money was not salary. Gains from cashing in stock options made up Rs 50.75 crore of the total, and the full package worked out to 742 times the pay of the median Infosys worker.
The reward arrived in the same financial year that the Bengaluru company has still not decided whether, or by how much, to raise the salaries of its roughly 325,000 staff. That gap, between a stock-fed payout at the top and a wage call left hanging at the bottom, is the part of the report worth reading twice.
Stock Gains Did the Heavy Lifting in Parekh’s Package
Strip the Rs 82.6 crore figure into its parts and the structure becomes clear. Fixed salary was a small slice. The bulk was variable, and the single biggest line came from share-based rewards that Parekh chose to convert into cash during the year.
Here is how the FY26 package broke down, drawn from the Infosys 2025-26 integrated annual report:
- Rs 50.75 crore in perquisites from exercised stock options, up from Rs 49.5 crore a year earlier
- Rs 23.35 crore in variable pay and performance incentives
- Rs 8.5 crore in fixed salary
Add those together and you land back at the headline number. The point is that close to two-thirds of Parekh’s take-home came from one source, the value he unlocked by exercising restricted stock units that had vested over previous years. His cash salary barely moved. The total moved because the equity did.
That distinction matters for how the 2.5 percent rise should be read. The board did not hand Parekh a fatter base. He cashed in awards that had already been granted, at prices set by where Infosys shares were trading when he pulled the trigger.
The Share Rally Behind the Payout
Parekh exercised 2,72,400 restricted stock units (RSUs, share awards that convert to stock once they vest) under the company’s 2015 incentive plan and another 64,690 units under the 2019 plan during FY26. The gain he booked is the difference between the grant terms and the market price on the day he exercised. So the higher the stock, the bigger the perquisite.
Infosys shares gave him a friendly window. The stock climbed through late 2025, and in December it touched a 52-week high on its US-listed shares, lifting the paper value of every unvested and vested award sitting in the executive pool.
The company also kept the pipeline full. During FY26 it granted Parekh fresh incentives worth roughly Rs 52 crore, a mix of performance-based RSUs tied to financial targets, environmental, social and governance milestones, total shareholder return metrics, plus annual time-based units under the 2019 plan. Those grants do not show up as cash today. They become next year’s, or a later year’s, exercise gain.
This is the mechanism that makes a chief executive’s realised pay swing with the share price rather than the salary memo. It rewards Parekh and ordinary shareholders on the same axis. It does very little for the employee whose compensation is fixed in rupees and reviewed once a year, if that.
742 Times the Median Worker’s Pay
The annual report puts a number on the distance. Including the impact of exercised stock incentives, Parekh’s remuneration was 742 times the median pay of an Infosys employee in FY26. Strip out the option exercises and the ratio falls to 289 times.
The two numbers describe the same person and the same year. The wide one captures what Parekh actually realised, equity included. The narrower one captures his recurring cash and variable pay alone. Both sit far above the ratios most Indian listed firms disclose, and the 742 figure is the one that travels in headlines because it is the money that hit his account.
Work backward from either ratio and the implied median lands near Rs 11 lakh a year, the rough midpoint for a workforce dominated by engineers in the early and middle stretches of their careers. For a fresher among the 20,000-plus college graduates Infosys recruited during the year, the starting figure sits well below that line.
None of this is unique to Infosys, and none of it is illegal or hidden. It is disclosed precisely so shareholders can see it. The question the disclosure raises is one of timing, because the same report that prints 742 also confirms the wage decision for the rank and file is still open.
The Wage Hike 325,000 Employees Are Still Waiting On
Infosys has not yet set salary increments for FY27. Chief Financial Officer Jayesh Sanghrajka said the company is weighing both the timing and the size of any revision against an uncertain backdrop, leaving hundreds of thousands of employees without a clear signal on when their next raise lands.
We have not really decided the timing.
That was Sanghrajka, speaking in a post-earnings interaction, when asked about the wage cycle. He pointed to several inputs the company weighs before committing:
- Attrition levels across the workforce
- Inflation and broader cost pressures
- Market and demand conditions for IT services
- How long it has been since the previous hike
The delay is not trivial. Reports from compensation trackers note the wait has stretched past four months into the new fiscal year, feeding unease among staff who have watched layoffs and slower hiring ripple across the sector. Infosys itself has guided for FY27 revenue growth of just 1.5 to 3.5 percent in constant currency, a measured outlook that gives management cover to hold the line on costs.
So the picture for an employee reads like this. The business is cautious enough to defer your raise, yet healthy enough to pay its chief executive a stock-driven package that set a fresh internal record. Both statements are true at once, which is exactly why the optics sting.
Where Parekh’s Pay Sits Among IT Bosses
Parekh is not even the highest-paid leader in Indian IT, and the spread among the majors says something about how each company structures the top job. The contrast with Tata Consultancy Services is the sharpest, because the two firms reward their bosses through very different instruments.
| Company | CEO | FY26 pay | Pay shape | CEO-to-median ratio | YoY change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Infosys | Salil Parekh | Rs 82.6 crore | Mostly exercised stock | 742x | +2.5% |
| TCS | K Krithivasan | Rs 28.11 crore | Mostly commission | 332.8x | +6.3% |
K Krithivasan, the TCS chief executive, took home Rs 28.11 crore, with a Rs 1.67 crore base and the rest paid as commission. His package rose 6.3 percent, a faster percentage bump than Parekh’s, off a much smaller and far more cash-weighted base. His pay ran 332.8 times the TCS median.
Look wider and the equity effect at the top becomes obvious. HCLTech chief C Vijayakumar drew Rs 94.6 crore in FY25, the biggest among the majors that year and 662.5 times his company’s median, while Wipro’s Srinivas Pallia took Rs 53.64 crore in the same period. The firms that lean on stock awards, Infosys and HCLTech, are the ones that produce the eye-catching multiples, because the multiple moves with the share price.
A $20 Billion Year, and an Uncertain Next One
The payout did sit on top of a genuinely strong year for the business. Infosys crossed $20 billion in annual revenue for the first time, reporting $20.2 billion with constant-currency growth of 3.1 percent and an adjusted operating margin of 21 percent. Large deal signings came to $14.9 billion in total contract value, and free cash flow reached $3.7 billion.
Shareholders were paid handsomely too. The company returned more than Rs 37,500 crore through dividends and a buyback during the year, the same buyback that drew attention in October when the promoters chose not to tender their shares. Parekh, whose realised pay is itself tied to the stock, benefits on the same side of the ledger as those investors.
Much of the forward story rests on artificial intelligence. Parekh told shareholders that AI programmes are now running across 90 percent of the firm’s top 200 clients, built around its Topaz AI suite, and the company has leaned on that pitch in its broader AI strategy laid out for investors. The fuller financial detail sits in the company’s Form 6-K filed with US regulators and the FY26 results earnings release on the $20 billion milestone.
If demand holds and the FY27 guidance proves conservative, the wage decision becomes a question of timing that resolves itself with a routine increment. If the macro picture stays soft and the deferral drags deeper into the year, the 742 figure stops being a footnote in an annual report and starts being the number employees quote back to management.
