Former TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan's pay jumped 13.17% to Rs 29.16 cr in FY23

Former TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan's overall remuneration jumped 13.17 per cent to Rs 29.16 crore in FY23, his last year as the chief executive of the largest IT services player.

In the annual report for the fiscal year 2022-23, TCS said Gopinathan earned over Rs 25 crore as commission, a salary of Rs 1.73 crore and Rs 2.43 crore in other benefits.

Gopinathan, who helmed the company for six years till May 31, had earned a salary Rs 25.76 crore FY22.

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Despite heading the largest company, Gopinathan's pay cheque is lower compared to peers and also lower than what his predecessor N Chandrasekaran drew in FY17 before being appointed as the Tata Sons Chairman.

On his elevation to the CEO's seat from being a chief financial officer, Gopinathan drew Rs 6.22 crore in FY17 which doubled to Rs 12.5 crore in FY18 and had been steadily rising since but for a blip in FY20.

Gopinathan has committed to help TCS in the leadership transition by being available till September, and is yet to reveal his future plans.

K Krithivasan, Gopinathan's successor, will be getting a basic salary of Rs 10 lakh per month which can go up to Rs 16 lakh, commission as decided by the board and other benefits like rent-free residential accommodation.

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The company's chief operating officer N G Subramaniam earned a total remuneration of Rs 23.60 crore for FY23, up from about Rs 20 crore in FY22.

The annual report said the increase in managerial remuneration is at 13.58 per cent as against the median hike of 5.11 per cent across its 6.14 lakh permanent employees.

Chandrasekaran thanked Gopinathan and also wished the best for Krithivasan in his note, and said TCS is significantly investing in building AI capabilities which include products and platforms that are AI-powered.

“We will also invest in research areas important for the future, in collaboration with our global academic partners and start-up ecosystem,” he added.

Krithivasan, who has been with TCS for several decades, said he has interacted with customers, leadership teams and employees as part of the leadership transition and added that an order book of USD 34.1 billion, coupled with strong pipeline of replenishment, gives it a good visibility for the medium-term.

Chandrasekaran also said that companies need to focus on building talent for the future as the energy, supply chain and AI (artificial intelligence) transitions are going to require companies to reskill or upskill existing talent base, hire and integrate new talent and invest in research.

In his note to shareholders, Gopinathan spoke about overcoming the challenges on the HR front, and said TCS' best years are ahead.

“We broke out of the vicious cycle of hiring and counter-hiring within the industry by investing in onboarding an unprecedented number of fresh engineers,” he said, pointing out that it hired 1.10 lakh fresh engineers in FY22 and 44,000 in FY23.

Its global head for human resources, Milind Lakkad, said half of its over 6 lakh workforce has been hired since March 2020 and underscored the need for staff to return to working from offices.

“New employees get acculturated through physical interactions with senior colleagues and leaders, by observing and following their behaviours and ways of thinking. Without those interactions, employee engagement as well as acculturation got badly impacted,” Lakkad said.

Amid the talk of newer technologies like generative AI, Lakkad said the “linearity” between revenue and headcount is not going to go away any time soon.

"With ever-increasing dependence on technology for competitive differentiation, we expect enterprise spending to keep growing, for which we will have to keep hiring new talent," he said.

The company scrip was trading 0.89 per cent up at Rs 3263 a piece on the BSE at 1348 hrs as against gains of 0.27 per cent on the benchmark.