Former Infosys CFO Mohandas Pai slammed IT companies over alleged disparity in pay scale between the top management and freshers entering the service.
Sharing an article on X (formally twitter), Pai termed the development ‘a sad state of affairs’.
“A very sad state of affairs in IT cos in India. Boards should stop being mercenary, rewarding CEO’s, too 1%, themselves more and more and give a much better deal to freshers and bottom 50%. This is not the culture in which IT service cos grew earlier,” he wrote.
Salaries of Chief Executives at India’s top five IT companies surged by over 160% in the last five years, while freshers have seen an increase of less than 4% during the same period, according to data sourced by Moneycontrol.
Annual reports from Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, HCLTech, Wipro and Tech Mahindra have highlighted stagnant salary growth and its impact on economic consumption.
For the seventh consecutive quarter, India’s top five IT services firms have experienced a decline in headcount. However, the slower pace of this reduction in the April-June quarter has generated optimism that these companies may end the financial year with a net increase in their workforce, according to a reports.
Collectively, these five companies concluded the first quarter of financial year 2025 with a total headcount of 1.523 million, as compared to 1.525 million at the end of March.
As the discretionary spending environment turned adverse due to high-interest rates and cautious client consumer sentiment in their mainstay markets of the US and Europe, the growth rate declined from double-digits to low-single-digits.