The gender tax at the top: Why India’s women CEOs still earn 18% less than men

For all the noise around nine-figure CEO pay cheques, India’s executive compensation story in 2025 is far more measured, strategic, and revealing when viewed through the median rather than the extremes. While promoter-led windfalls and billionaire founders dominate headlines, boards across India Inc are quietly redrawing what leadership is worth in a volatile, post-growth-at-all-costs economy.

Across professional, non-promoter CEOs, the median compensation in India has stabilised around ₹10 to ₹12 crore in 2025, according to staffing and leadership experts. What stands out is not just the number, but the logic behind it. Boards are no longer paying for stature or tenure alone. They are paying for navigation.

“The median CEO compensation in India for 2025 has stabilised at approximately ₹10–12 crore for professional CEOs within the BSE 200,” says Viswanath PS, managing director and CEO of Randstad India. “While billion-rupee packages capture headlines, the real story is the 12–14% year-on-year growth in median pay, driven by a maturing market where boards are willing to pay for safe hands capable of navigating geopolitical and technological shifts.”

A Wide Corridor, Not a Single Benchmark

If the median offers clarity, the percentile spread reveals how sharply complexity is now being priced in. In 2025, the 25th percentile of CEO compensation sits around ₹5–7 crore, largely reflecting mid-market firms and traditional manufacturing. The 75th percentile, however, has pushed toward ₹18–22 crore, driven by BFSI, IT services, and large-cap consumer goods companies.

“This widened spread highlights the valuation of complexity,” Viswanath notes. “The larger the global footprint and regulatory maze, the steeper the percentile climb.”

That dispersion becomes even more visible when looking beyond listed giants. Anil Agarwal, founder and CEO of InCruiter, points out that once extreme promoter packages are excluded, the corridor tightens considerably for most Indian businesses.

“In FY25, if you look only at professional, non-promoter CEOs, the median compensation is around ₹10 crore,” Agarwal says. “At the lower end, around the 25th percentile, compensation starts near ₹1.5 crore, and at the 75th percentile it goes up to about ₹6–7 crore. Pay is ultimately driven by size and sector. Large companies and BFSI or IT firms pay far more, while mid-sized businesses sit in a tighter, more practical range.”

The Gender Gap Narrows, But Structural Bias Persists

Despite incremental progress, the gender pay gap at the CEO level remains a systemic issue. In 2025, women CEOs in India earn approximately 80–85% of what their male counterparts make, translating into a 15–18% gap.

“This is not always about base salary,” says Viswanath. “Men still dominate sectors with aggressive long-term incentive structures like tech and finance, while women are more represented in sectors with conservative bonus pools.”

Agarwal adds that the deeper challenge lies upstream. “The bigger issue is how few women reach the CEO seat at all. When women do become CEOs, they are often leading smaller or less complex businesses, which naturally reflects in lower pay.”

Age Is No Longer a Proxy for Value

Boards in 2025 are no longer using age as a shorthand for capability. While the 50–55 age band continues to command the highest compensation overall, the logic behind it has evolved.

“This is the compensation sweet spot,” Viswanath explains. “These leaders bring institutional memory from managing the 2008 and 2020 crises, while still having enough runway to execute five-year transformation strategies.”

At the same time, a parallel premium has emerged for next-generation leadership. CEOs in the 40–45 age bracket who can straddle legacy P&Ls while understanding GenAI and platform economics are increasingly out-earning more senior peers.

“Younger CEOs are not automatically paid less,” Agarwal says. “In startups, digital businesses, and promoter-led transitions, boards are paying for speed, tech thinking, and future readiness.”

Pay Is Higher Risk, Not More Generous

One of the most underreported shifts in CEO compensation is how risk has been reallocated. Fixed pay has steadily shrunk from nearly 40% pre-2020 to around 30–32% in 2025. The balance is now heavily linked to performance, ESG metrics, and long-term value creation.

“Boards are more aggressive on at-risk pay and more conservative on guaranteed pay,” Viswanath says. “If the company does not deliver on EBITDA or ESG targets, the CEO takes the largest hit.”

Agarwal agrees. “Barely 40% of CEO pay is fixed now. The rest is tied to outcomes, not titles.”

Contracts Are Being Rewritten Mid-Flight

Market volatility has also normalised mid-tenure renegotiations. Around 20–25% of CEOs are now recalibrating contracts during their term, often to adjust performance metrics rather than chase outright pay hikes.

“These are metric re-calibration conversations,” Viswanath explains. “KPIs set two years ago can quickly become obsolete due to AI disruption or trade shifts.”

The Quiet Trends Boards Do Not Disclose

Behind formal disclosures, companies are deploying more creative retention tools. Viswanath points to succession-linked retention grants and long-tail incentives designed to deter poaching by private equity and global firms. Agarwal highlights a more uncomfortable truth.

“CEO pay is moving far ahead of general employee wage growth,” he says. “While staff salaries stagnate, executive compensation, especially equity-linked, has surged. The internal pay gap has never been wider.”

Who Is Overpaid and Who Is at Risk

Both experts agree that boards continue to overpay for stability in stagnant sectors while underpaying transformation leaders in mid-market manufacturing.

“These CEOs are expected to overhaul supply chains and implement AI with limited resources,” Viswanath says. “The burnout-to-pay ratio is dangerously high.”

Meanwhile, CEOs with purely operational skill sets are seeing their market value plateau or decline. “If a CEO cannot act as a capital allocator or vision-setter, their compensation has dipped in real terms,” he adds.

Sectoral Corrections Tell the Final Story

The sharpest pay corrections in 2025 have hit EdTech, late-stage consumer tech, legacy IT services, and PSUs. Founder CEOs have cut cash pay to signal discipline, equity values have corrected sharply, and government caps have frozen PSU compensation.

At the other end, traditional manufacturing and industrial sectors are quietly paying above market to attract leadership. “They are leveraging a stability premium,” Viswanath says. “In an uncertain economy, predictability has become its own currency.”

In 2025, India’s CEO pay story is no longer about excess. It is about risk, resilience, and the price of steering companies through uncertainty. And that story is best told not by the outliers, but by the median.