TCS CEO Gopinathan's salary rose 29% to Rs 16 crore in 2018-19

BENGALURU: TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan and COO NG Subramaniam were the top winners in the compensation sweepstakes in the last fiscal year. Gopinathan’s compensation (excluding stock options) rose 29% to Rs 16 crore in 2018-19. It was Rs 12.5 crore previously. Subramaniam’s remuneration was up nearly 26% to Rs 11.6 crore, from Rs 9.2 crore in the previous year.

The company achieved twin milestones in the 2018-19 fiscal -- crossing $20 billion in revenue, and a 20-fold increase in revenue over the last 16 years. In April last year, TCS touched $100 billion in market capitalisation to join the club of the 100 most valuable companies in the world.

The percentage increase in the median remuneration of employees in 2018-19 was 3.7% compared to 0.57% previously. The company added 29,297 employees last year taking the total headcount to 4.24 lakh. The ratio of the remuneration of the CEO to the median remuneration of the employees of the company was 262.3, which represented a 28.3% increase.

TCS rolled out an average salary increase of 6% in India earlier this year. The company, however, said the total increase was approximately 7.2% in the last fiscal, after accounting for promotions and other event-based compensation revisions. Employees outside India received a wage increase varying from 2%-5%, it said. The increase in managerial remuneration was 14.6% for the last fiscal. In 2019 fiscal, its attrition rate in IT Services was 11.3%, the lowest in the industry.

In a letter to shareholders, Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran said geopolitical events are threatening to drag down major economies and disrupt global trade and commerce. “At times like this, it is more important than ever, to stay close to the customer. In the last downturn, TCS’ customer-centric philosophy and modular organization structure allowed it to work closely with customers, and be agile in responding to their needs and reacting to events on the ground.” He said that thanks to the differentiated capabilities that TCS has steadily invested in building up over the last decade, it is even more deeply embedded in their customers' businesses, and is central to their growth and transformation initiatives. “For a business that has navigated technology change over the last five decades, the ups and downs of short term economic cycles become insignificant blips in the broader sweep of history.”

Gopinathan said the company's strong performance is driven by two inter-related factors: the rapid mainstreaming of digital technologies, and TCS's expanding participation in its customers’ growth and transformation initiatives. “Adoption of digital technologies such as cloud, mobile, IoT, analytics, machine learning, AI and automation has reached the inflection point and is triggering large re-architecture programs,” he said.