Infosys’ New CEO To Get Salary At Par With TCS, Wipro, Cognizant

The CEO’s pay had never come up for discussion at Infosys, India's second-largest software company, as the position always went to founders, who held shares in the company and this compensated for their comparatively low salary. But now, as the firm is going to hire its first non-founder CEO, it is ready to spend some bucks to attract talent.

According to sources, Infosys will match the salary of the new CEO with the top companies in the industry to reach out to top IT executives. Salary of $2 Million per annum is being looked at for this position.

Infosys had reported revenue of $8.4 billion in the financial year 2013-14.

The vacancy for a new chief executive arose after the current chief executive SD Shibulal expressed desire to step down earlier than his planned retirement in March 2015.

Till now, Infosys’ chief executives have been making money from the dividends earned through shares. Shibulal got only Rs 16 lakh as salary during the financial year 2013-14, but he holds about 25 lakh Infosys shares.

Some experts, however, have expressed doubt whether Infosys' decision to cough up dollars would be enough to attract top talents as there is ambiguity on the role and powers of the new chief executive.

"Matching the rivals (when it comes to CEO salaries) is fine, but anyone interested in the job would be more concerned with what role and powers he will have," said the head of a Bangalore-based staffing firm that also works on CEO compensation.

Both Egon Zehnder and Infosys did not comment on the matter.