IT's pay puzzle: Wipro, TechM median salaries drop despite rise in headcount

Mint

3 days ago

Median remuneration to employees at Wipro Ltd and Tech Mahindra Ltd fell simultaneously for the first time in eight years in FY25, despite both companies expanding their workforces. Analysts said that this indicates that the two IT service providers likely added more freshers as well as hired replacements at lower salaries to boost profitability.
In FY25, Wipro and Tech Mahindra reported a decline of 0.6% and 6.52% in annual median salary, respectively, according to their annual reports. At Wipro, median salary totalled ₹9.78 lakh (around $11,000), whereas median salary at Tech Mahindra worked out to ₹18.3 lakh for males and ₹15.4 lakh for females. Median salary is the mid-point of a set of salaries arranged in ascending order, where half the salaries are higher and half lower.
In contrast, the country's two largest IT outsourcers—Tata Consultancy Services Ltd and Infosys Ltd—increased their median salary to employees by 6.3% and 9.6%, respectively. Median salary at the country's third-largest software services provider HCL Technologies Ltd is not yet known as the company has yet to release its annual report for FY25.
Wipro and Tech Mahindra—India's fourth and fifth-largest IT firms—last reported such a simultaneous decline in median salary in FY17. Individually, Pune-headquartered Tech Mahindra has seen its median remuneration decline six times in the past 10 years, whereas it is the third such instance for the Bengaluru-based Wipro. Median remuneration to employees at Wipro does not include whole-time directors.
TCS and Infosys reported such a decline only once in the past decade, in FY21 and FY15, respectively. HCLTech is the only company among the country's top five software services firms to have never seen its median salary decline.
Emails sent to Wipro and Tech Mahindra remained unanswered till press time.
The fall in the median remuneration comes at a time when profitability of the country's largest IT outsourcers has been under pressure. These companies are exploring various ways to improve operating margins and one such way is to hire junior employees at lower costs.
Lower median remuneration at Wipro and Tech Mahindra could imply that the companies added more freshers and/or hired candidates at lower salaries to replace talent at mid-management and senior levels, which led to a decline in median salaries, analysts said.
'Firms such as Wipro and TechM are following the lead of TCS by moving work to tier-4 locations and increasingly hiring from universities which are less prestigious. This is significantly lowering the cost of these employees and bringing down the average wages paid," said Peter Bendor-Samuel, founder of Everest Group, a Dallas-based tech research firm.
He added that this was done to boost operating margins.
'The relentless focus on reducing cost is having its desired effect of allowing these firms to post higher margins," said Bendor-Samuel.
TCS, Infosys and HCLTech reported operating margins of 24.3%, 21.1% and 18.3%, respectively, in FY25, respectively. TCS's margin declined by 30 basis points, while Infosys and HCLTech's margins grew by 40 basis points and 10 basis points, respectively.
Wipro and Tech Mahindra improved their profitability the most last year. Wipro increased its operating margins by 100 basis points to 17.1%, whereas Tech Mahindra's profitability jumped 360 basis points to 9.7%.
Hiring more employees can increase the median, or the mid-level salary. If a company adds headcount, the median salary is expected to increase because there are more employees in the company. Still, if the median salary goes down, it means that the number of employees earning salaries below the median amount has increased and that middle and senior-level employees have decreased.
Both Wipro and Tech Mahindra added headcount last year by 732 and 3,276 employees, respectively. Wipro ended with 233,346 employees whereas Tech Mahindra ended with 148,731 employees. TCS added 6,433 employees to end with 607,979 people, whereas Infosys added headcount by 6,338 to 323,578 people. In contrast, HCLTech reduced staff by 4,061 to end with 223,420 people, becoming the only IT outsourcer of the top five to cut headcount last fiscal.
A second analyst said churn at the top may also have contributed to the decline in median salaries at both Wipro and Tech Mahindra.
'The reduction in median remuneration to employees is a reflection of the fact that the companies may have hired more freshers and/or let go of lateral and senior staff," said a Mumbai-based analyst on the condition of anonymity.
Both Wipro and Tech Mahindra have seen churn at the top.
Mint reported on 26 June that Tech Mahindra saw at least 20 senior management movements at leadership levels, including service lines and geography heads, since March 2024.
Even at Wipro, despite chief executive officer Srinivas Pallia's emphasis for promoting internal candidates to top roles, the company has seen significant leadership churn. Over the past two years, at least 30 senior executives at the level of senior vice-president and above have exited, driven either by better opportunities, or limited growth prospects under Pallia's predecessor Thierry Delaporte, who stepped down last year after four years at the helm.
However, a third expert attributed the falling median salary to experienced employees accepting roles at lower salaries in a challenging job market.
'Because growth has been flat for these companies, they are refocusing on investing in their experienced staff while also lowering the overall wage bill. During this challenging market, there are also many experienced workers available, and it's easier to hire experienced talent at lower wage levels," said Phil Fersht, chief executive of HFS Research.
He added that this trend is not a one-off and that IT outsourcers are looking at hiring employees at lower costs.
'There is a lot of flux in global services at the moment, with many providers laying off staff, which is making the talent pool of experienced people larger and bringing down wage demands," said Fersht.
Wipro and Tech Mahindra were the only two companies in the top five Indian IT firms to see a second successive full-year revenue decline in FY25. Wipro and Tech Mahindra reported revenue declines of 2.72% and 0.21% to $10.5 billion and $6.3 billion, respectively, in FY25.