In a trend that is fast catching up, pay cheques that run into crores is on the rise as boards take up additional responsibilities and risks. Senior executives earning in crores in India Inc has increased nearly threefold in the past two years according to data revealed by market data assessment firms in the financial year 2017

Not just startups that are on a hiring spree for management level executives with a handsome pay, the number of senior executives of BSE200 companies who earned more than Rs 1 crore in remuneration in FY17 rose by 177% in two years.

The recently published list of top 10 highest-paid executives for 2016-17, too, established the drift.

Surprisingly, the list of executives under 40 with annual salaries of Rs 1 crore, or more, at listed Indian firms have also seen a rise indicating the need of young talent in the companies with profits soaring sky high.

According to the income tax department for the assessment year 2015-16 59,830 individuals with gross total income of over Rs 1 crore had a cumulative income of Rs 1.54 lakh crore.

Contemplating what contributed to this growth: the market data assessment firms found out that not just large companies paid better remuneration to the senior management, the salary of the executives from mid-cap companies hiked as profits soared. 

According to the latest data, the BSE200 group companies house five crorepati employees each with an average compensation of Rs 5.5 crore. This costs the company nearly Rs 5,000 crore in compensation to executives in the past fiscal or 1.1% of the total net profit. 

The rise in profit to the rise of best employee salaries, however, is disproportionate. Senior executives receiving Rs 1 crore or more salary bracket grew 47% every year between FY15 and FY17, while the profit of the BSE200 companies rose by 8%. 

HDFC Bank, India’s largest private bank that has recently earned the tag of ‘domestic systemically important bank’ from RBI had the largest number of senior executives (105) earning more than `1 crore,

Prominent IT major Tata Consultancy Services closely leads HDFC with 91 crorepati employees and Bharti AirtelBSE hits the third spot with 82 executives earning more than a crore salary annually. The bank’s net profit grew by 19.5% annually in the past two fiscals. 

not just the IT and banking or telecom sector but manufacturing sector has also caught up with the trend of paying employees with fat pay cheques to increase its employee retention.

Manufacturing sector, companies such as Tata SteelBSE , JSW Steel and Bharat Forge increased the count of the executives in the sample. In FY17, every fourth crorepati executive was from the manufacturing sector compared with one in 10 about two years ago. 

Senior executives in the sample include Srikantan Moorthy, head of engineering global services at InfosysBSE 0.36 % (Rs 3.2 cr), Jalaj Dani, president, supply chain, at Asian PaintsBSE -0.22 % (RS 3 cr), Amarpreet Singh Anand, VP, United Spirits (Rs 2.1 cr), and Dheeraj Arora, VP, modern trade, at HUL (Rs 2.1 cr). 

There was also a rise in the number of crorepati executives at midcap companies, such as Kajaria Ceramics and Bata India.

The number of such executives at Kajaria Ceramics increased to nine in FY17 compared with two in FY15 

Not just the whooping pay package, the top executives enjoy other perks like employee stock ownership options to give them a direct share in the company profit and receive various tax benefits.

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