5 Highest-Paid Executives Of Infosys

May 24, 2015

Like every year, Infosys's SEC filing this year too reveals its highest-paid executives.

The men who earned maximum remuneration during the past year -- a year that marked the biggest-ever leadership transition in the history of India's second largest software exporter. Also, the year when Infosys saw some of its most-high profile executives leaving the company.

Here's over to Infosys's 5 highest-paid executives...

1. Vishal Sikka

May 24, 2015

The highest-paid executive at Infosys is CEO Vishal Sika. Former CTO of SAP, Sikka joined Infosys as chief executive officer and managing director of thecompany in June 2014.

Sikka's base salary currently stands at $900,000 per annum, with annual target variable pay at about $4.18 million.His salary is heavily inclined towardsvariable pay based on performance and earnings from stock options.

According to the company's SEC filing last year, Sikka commands an annual salary of $5.08 million and stock options worth another $2 million.

2. UB Pravin Rao

May 24, 2015

Another top-paid Infosys executive is chief operating officer UB Pravin Rao. Pravin Rao took home a total package of nearly $1 million, which includesbonuses, incentives and earnings from stock options.

His base salary stood at $109,583; bonus and incentives made another $616,509.

Pravin Rao is also the chairperson of Infosys BPO.

3. Rajiv Bansal

May 24, 2015

Chief financial officer Rajiv Bansal Bansael earned a package of $770,858 for the financial year ended March 2015. His base salary stood at $124,567 andbonus and incentive were $450,980.

Prior to becoming the CFO, Rajiv was vice president and head of finance. Bansal joined Infosys in 1999.

4. Srikantan Moorthy

May 24, 2015

Another top-paid executive Srikantan Moorthy took home a remuneration of $658,636, this includes bonuses, incentives and earnings from stock options.

Moorthy's base salary stood at $85,285 and bonus and incentive were $440,574.

Infosys human resources head, Srikantan Moorthy recently moved to a new delivery function role effective April 1. Moorthy is now executive vice presidentand head, global services, application development and maintenance, independent validation services and business intelligence.

5. David D Kennedy

May 24, 2015

The lone foreigner among the company's top-paid execs, David D Kennedy was appointed as executive vice president & general counsel of Infosys in November 2014. Kennedy is responsible for all legal and compliance matters of the company.

His total compensation during the fiscal year 2014-15 stood at $209,701. His base salary was $185,192 and bonus and incentive stood at $19,928.

Infosys to 'follow' Google, Facebook in evaluating employees

BENGALURU: Infosys is in the midst of putting together a staff appraisal practice that includes some of the best practices followed at new age companies, including Google and Facebook, and will start evaluating employees from October next, a move some experts believe if executed well, could help the country's second largest software firm retain the tag of preferred employer in the country.

One of the benchmarks Infosys will take into consideration to evaluate its over 160,000-employees will be on feedback from its over 900 clients. The new system will also see an individual's performance being judged by his team members and in many cases, even subordinates in the team. Significantly, Design Thinking, the creative and systematic approach to problem-solving, will be used to implement these 'futuristic performance measures,' according to a senior executive.

"Today, we have a 360 degree feedback for senior people — both internal feedback, and in some cases, through external feedback," said Srikantan Moorthy, HR head. "Already, more than 2,500 people have gone through this process, some of whom have got feedback from clients. If we have to extend it for 160,000 people, we have to use Design Thinking in articulating the solution before it gets rolled out."

Although Google and Facebook keep details of their HR practices close to their chest, some experts said the companies use a lot of analytics to find the right candidate for a job or for a promotion. Further, in many cases, they even seek client feedback on an engineer's performance at a particular project. "When we talk about HR practices, developmental plans and promotions are components. So, we are looking at best practices at various companies at what they do and create a more futuristic perform ance management system that will last for some time. That's what we are working on," Moorthy told ET in an interview earlier this month.

For now, homegrown technology firms, including Infosys, rely on data analytics when it comes to hiring prospective employees. But the biggest challenge haunting these companies is to retain talent as many junior engineers at these firms leave the company, with the attrition rate being the highest in the band of employees with two to five years' experience. Infosys had an attrition rate of over 20% for the second quarter ended September 30 while its city rival Wipro had an attrition level of close to 17%.

"We will be applying Design Thinking principles to engage with employees to get feedback, articulate the problem, develop the right model or solution before rolling it," said Moorthy.

For this reason, some experts dub this thinking at country's second largest software exporter as a step in the right direction.

"Indian companies for a long time have seen employees at lower levels as replaceable, but with raising costs, higher training costs, we see a change in thinking happening, also in India," said Holger Mueller, principal analyst and VP at Constellation Research.

Since Infosys tasked its first nonfounder chief executive Vishal Sikka to help the company match up with industry-matching growth numbers of 13% yearly growth, Sikka has kicked off various steps to motivate employees. From rewarding them with more number of promotions and even doing away with the variable pay component for entry-level employees, Infosys also started with the first kind of crowdsourcing initiative, 'Murmurations' to motivate employees.

For all these reasons, the management believes that the company should be able to bring down attrition to 13-15% by as early as June next year.

Infosys vice-presidents get salary hikes of Rs 4-5 crore

BANGALORE: Infosys has raised the salaries of its top executives so sharply that some of them are now in the $1-million (Rs 6-crore) compensation club - making them almost unpoachable by even international rivals - and raising the salary benchmark in the Indian IT industry. 

The executive vice-presidents who are now at the Rs 6-crore level had salaries in the Rs 1.2-Rs 2 crore range previously, meaning that they have got three to five-fold hikes.

The move comes as newly appointed CEO Vishal Sikka seeks to revitalize the demoralized company and stem the flood of exits, and brings in senior executives from his erstwhile employer, SAP, at salaries that Infosys has largely been unused to. 

Navnit Singh, MD of executive search firm Korn/Ferry India, says it is a retention strategy to make the senior executives less vulnerable to competition. "If you look at salaries of some of the global companies, they are comparable to what Infosys has done," he said.

"It's a golden handcuff," said a senior executive in the company who did not want to be named. When contacted, Infosys said it would disclose the details in its statutory filings, "as appropriate in due course".

Considering that Indian executives are seen increasingly as great candidates for global companies, HR experts say the new salaries are warranted. Former Wipro co-CEO Suresh Vaswani is on Dell's board and management team, and former Infosys president BG Srinivas is group managing director and executive director of Hong Kong-based telecom and media giant PCCW.




In the period immediately preceding Sikka's arrival at Infosys, Srinivas and former consulting head Stephen Pratt had compensations of over $1 million. Now, at least five of the existing executives, and some of the new appointees from SAP, are said to be in that bracket. The salaries of other top executives, too, are said to have been raised significantly. 
In June, the $8.2-billion IT-services company elevated 12 senior VPs to executive VPs, and gave some of them new roles. Among these are Sandeep Dadlani, head of retail, CPG and logistics, and head of Americas; Rajesh Krishnamurthy, head of energy, communications & services and resources & utilities, and head of Europe; Mohit Joshi, head of financial services, and head of Brazil and Mexico; Sanjay Jalona, head of high-tech & manufacturing and engineering services; and Manish Tandon, head of life sciences and services in North America. Many of these are over $1-billion businesses.



Inofsys CEO Vishal Sikka 
An HR executive who does not want to be named says the company needs to reduce the differential in the salaries of Sikka and the rest. Sikka came in as the highest paid professional CEO of an Indian company, drawing a salary of $5.08 million (Rs 30 crore). This includes a base salary of $9,00,000 and a variable pay of $4.18 million that is subject to the company achieving certain fiscal milestones. 

GC Jayaprakash, executive director in RGF Executive Search, says the standard practice in the IT industry is to offer substantial variable pays at top levels. 

So while the Infosys top execs would have received a significant increase in their fixed salaries, the much larger increment would be in bonuses and variable pay. "This ensures that the current structure does not become too imbalanced, and most of the payments happen depending on how the company and the individual performs," the HR executive says. 

Another HR executive who does not want to be named says: "By the end of this exercise, I expect the top 300 executives in Infosys will see role expansions, reorganization of their career tracks and significant increases in their compensation."

Infosys hunts for startups to partner

BANGALORE: Infosys has begun to engage with venture capitalists to identify startups to work with or to acquire. "There are a lot of innovative startups. We started talking to VCs a couple of weeks back and we had a large VC showcase 6-7 startups," said Infosys COO UB Pravin Rao at the Motilal Oswal investor conference in Mumbai on Tuesday.

IT services companies have started engaging with startups in an effort to access innovative solutions or fill gaps in their technology portfolio. Newer technologies like cloud, mobility and analytics have led to a blooming of startups with creative ideas. Wipro has been active in the space. It already has strategic investments in two — Axeda Corp and Opera Solutions — and has been scouting for more partnerships. TOI reported this month that Wipro is in talks with startups Flytxt, 99tests and Avekshaa Technologies for strategic tie-ups.

Rao said there are gaps in Infosys' capabilities in areas like healthcare and lifesciences, where it has limited presence compared to some of its competitors.

Last year, Infosys set aside a $100 million innovation fund to invest in products, platforms and solutions (PPS). The company hived off the PPS %business into a wholly-owned subsidiary called Edgeverve Systems. PPS contributes 5.2% of Infosys' $8.2 billion revenues.

"We already have shareholder approval for deploying the $100 million fund. We will look to partner with some startups. We are looking at acquisition in the space as well because that is also going to be critical," said Rao.

Infosys COO UB Pravin Rao 

Rao said Infosys has taken several measures to contain attrition that had touched 19.5% in the June quarter. He said the company has brought in predictability in the compensation structure and had switched to a quarterly promotion cycle. "We expect it to take a few more quarters before we get back to 13-15% attrition, which is where we are comfortable," he said.

Rao said the company needs to build capabilities in some markets where it does not have presence, like Latin America and Japan. "Obviously we will take time to scale organically in these areas, so we will continuously look at acquisition in this space. It's not that there are too many candidates, but we are always looking to acquire, to build capability or expand presence in these markets," he said.