To get back growth, Infy ramps up pay

Infosys Chief Operating Officer UB Pravin Rao took home ₹6 crore as salary and incentives while CFO Rajiv Bansal was paid a total of ₹4.5 crore during 2014-15, making both of them the highest paid executives during the last fiscal.

As CEO Vishal Sikka joined the company in August last year, his salary was calculated on a pro-rata basis, and stood at ₹4.3 crore ($741,431).

However, he is one of the highest paid CEOs in the country with a total salary of $5.08 million with stock options worth $2 million.

Rao’s total compensation of ₹6 crore included a base salary of $109,583, bonus and incentives of $616,509 and annual commission of $244,554, according to a filing with the SEC.

This is more than a three-fold increase when compared to the 2014 financial year, when Rao netted ₹83 lakh as salary.

Chief Financial Officer Rajiv Bansal was the second highest-paid executive during the financial year, earning ₹4.6 crore.

This included a base salary of $124,567, bonus and incentives worth $450,980 and commissions to the tune of $172,700, the filing added. Bansal’s salary in the 2015 financial year was ₹1.7 crore.

These two executives netted higher than the 47-year-old CEO Vishal Sikka, who earned ₹4.3 crore during the year but did not receive any bonus, incentives and commission during the last fiscal year, the filings showed.

However, he is entitled for long-term benefits, which is to the tune of $25,000.

Also, during the 2015 financial year, Infosys granted Sikka 27,067 Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), which is equal to 54,134 RSUs at a price of ₹5 per share (after adjustment for a bonus issued in December 2014). The RSUs have a vesting period of four years from the date of the grant.

Srikantan Moorthy, HR Head, raked in ₹3.9 crore, which includes a base salary of $85,285, bonus and incentives of $440,574, and a commission of $116,769, according to the filings.

Moorthy’s pay also went up three times from the ₹1.3 crore that he netted in the 2014 financial year.

These pay increases are efforts to get the company back into the growth path, as it has consistently lagged behind peers such as TCS and Cognizant in the last few years.

Infosys clocked revenue growth which was below the industry growth of 13-14 per cent as well as below Street expectations but has guided for a 10-12 per cent growth in 2016 financial year.

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