India Inc’s CEO pay in 2025: Gender gaps persist, Boards rewrite the rules

By 2025, CEO compensation in India has entered a reset phase. After years of inflated packages driven by growth-at-any-cost narratives, boards are now redesigning pay structures around discipline, performance sustainability, and leadership resilience. Yet while the architecture of CEO pay is changing, one critical gap remains stubbornly intact: gender parity at the top.

According to Sanjeeta Mohta, Workplace Culture Expert at Learning Spiral, the median CEO compensation in India this year stands between ₹7 crore and ₹10 crore, excluding outliers and promoter-driven packages. The figure reflects total annual compensation including base salary, performance-linked incentives, and long-term incentives such as stock options.

“The numbers we are seeing in 2025 are not driven by market hype anymore,” Mohta said. “Boards are anchoring compensation around sustainable operating performance.”

The Pay Distribution: Who Earns What

At the interquartile range of CEO pay, the 25th percentile earns roughly ₹4 crore, while the 75th percentile earns between ₹18 crore and ₹22 crore. Capital-intensive industries including manufacturing, infrastructure, BFSI and financial services cluster around the mid-to-upper-middle band. Meanwhile, technology-enabled platforms and pharmaceutical companies dominate the upper quartile, driven by global benchmarking and intangible asset valuations.

But beneath these headline numbers lies a structural imbalance.

The Gender Gap at the Top

Despite steady improvements in pay parity across junior and mid-level management, CEO compensation remains heavily skewed.

“At the CEO level, the gender disparity still exists,” said Maya Nair, Executive Director at Grafton Recruitment. “Male CEOs continue to earn substantially more than female CEOs. The data shows the median at 62%, meaning women CEOs earn about 60% less than male CEOs.”

Female representation at the CEO level remains stuck at around 5%, Nair added, creating a scarcity loop where limited representation compounds compensation inequality. Even when controlling for company size, Mohta’s data shows a 15–20% compensation gap between male and female CEOs.

Complicating the issue further, many women are appointed CEOs during stabilisation or turnaround phases, where pay is tightly structured around business cycle controls rather than market parity. In these roles, incentives are narrower and risk-sharing mechanisms more restrictive.

Age, Experience, and the New Pay Curve

CEO compensation in 2025 increasingly follows a defined age-performance curve.

Both Mohta and Nair point to the 45–55 age range as the most highly compensated cohort. Nair places the peak even narrower between 48 and 58, describing it as the sweet spot combining agility, proven experience, and investor confidence.

“These leaders have decades of track records across complex multinational markets,” Nair said. “They are often viewed as mentors for succession planning and long-term continuity.”

However, younger CEOs are no longer automatically paid less.

Boards now selectively award 10–15% pay premiums to younger CEOs who demonstrate strong digital scale, capital efficiency, or cross-border execution capability, Mohta noted. Instead of age, boards increasingly rely on “capability density” as the primary compensation benchmark.

While younger CEOs may receive lower fixed pay than highly tenured counterparts, they are often compensated through aggressive performance-linked bonuses and incentive plans, reflecting shorter result delivery cycles.

Variable Pay Takes Centre Stage

The composition of CEO compensation has shifted dramatically.

“Fixed pay from boards is now less than variable compensation,” Mohta said. Pre-2020 packages rewarded company size and growth. In 2025, packages reward cash-flow discipline, governance, risk management, and crisis recovery.

As a result, earning full compensation has become harder — but far more tightly connected to business outcomes.

Mid-term CEO contract renegotiations have also surged. Such discussions, which affected less than 10% of CEOs before 2020, now involve 25–30% of sitting CEOs, typically revising performance targets, vesting timelines, and ESOP structures. Base pay increases are increasingly rare.

Sectoral Corrections: Who Gained, Who Lost

The sharpest corrections in CEO pay in 2025 were recorded in:

Startups and consumer internet: 20–40% reductions due to funding discipline and profitability pressure

EdTech and FinTech: Reset driven by regulation, margin compression, and investor scrutiny

In contrast, boards are paying above market in sectors such as pharma, speciality chemicals, and defence manufacturing, where leadership with regulatory, export, and geopolitical expertise remains scarce.

Traditional sectors are now offering more predictable, transparent and benchmarked CEO compensation, while tech and startups remain volatile and sentiment-driven.

For many leaders, Mohta said, predictability now outweighs upside fantasy.

Goodbye Superstar CEO

Boards are also redesigning CEO risk frameworks. Instead of oversized upfront pay, they are offering lower initial compensation paired with stronger exit safety nets, including consulting mandates and post-tenure board roles.

The era of the untouchable superstar CEO is giving way to long-term institutional stewardship.

At the same time, CEOs known primarily for vision without operational depth are seeing their premiums decline.

“Pure growth evangelists without execution capability are being paid less,” Mohta said. “In capital-tight environments, vision alone no longer commands a premium.”

Despite structural improvements, the most glaring weakness of India’s CEO compensation landscape remains gender parity.

Without persistent efforts to raise female representation beyond its current 5%, Nair warned, the compensation gap will continue to reproduce itself at the very top of corporate leadership.

In 2025, boards may be rewriting the rules of CEO pay. But the final chapter on equality is still unwritten.