Meet the head of a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company. Saugata Gupta, MD and CEO, of Marico, saw a significant jump of 157 per cent in his total pay package in the financial year 2022 (FY22) to emerge as the highest-paid CEO in the segment.
Saugata Gupta’s pay package, Rs 14.02 crore in FY21, increased to Rs 36.1 crore in FY22. However, a substantial part of this came via perquisites— employee stock ownership plan and restricted stock units, where the company gives its shares to the employee—during the year as Gupta exercised stock options granted to him.
Here, The salary of Sanjiv Mehta, MD and CEO of Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL), also saw a substantial jump of 47 per cent to Rs 22 crore in FY22 versus Rs 15 crore in FY21. Mehta drew Rs 3.7 crore as salary, Rs 9.2 crore as allowances, Rs 4.3 crore as a bonus and Rs 4.2 crore as perks, including long-term incentives. Contribution to provident fund (PF) and perquisites formed other components of his salary.
Mehta, the highest-paid FMCG CEO in FY20 with a salary of Rs 19.42 crore, saw his remuneration drop 21 per cent in FY21, and Nestle India’s chairman and Md Suresh Narayanan dethroned him, boasting of a pay package of Rs 17.19 crore (in 2020—Nestle follows the January-December financial year).
Dabur CEO Mohit Malhotra, for instance, saw a 42.85 per cent jump in remuneration for FY22 to Rs 14.60 crore. Similarly, Britannia’s Varun Berry’s pay package jumped by 9.03 per cent to Rs 11.47 crore compared to Rs 10.52 crore a year. This excludes Rs 33.13 crore on the exercise of phantom options under the Britannia Industries Limited Phantom Option Scheme. (A phantom stock is where an employee has all the benefits of owning a stock without actually having ownership of the stock and is paid in cash when a milestone is reached.)
This year, however, Narayanan came in as the third highest paid top executive in the segment, despite his pay package for 2022 posting a 9.3 per cent jump over CY21 (Calendar Year) at Rs 18.8 crore. Narayanan’s pay package included salary and allowances, perquisites, the company’s contribution to PF, and commission and performance-linked incentives. The CMD was paid Rs 9.24 crore under the salary and allowances component, Rs 5.9 crore as perks and Rs 3.37 lakh towards PF contribution. He drew Rs 3.32 crore as commission and performance-linked incentives in 2021.
Salaries of FMCG executives, however, have seen a jump in spite of subdued performances by the companies, with some justification.
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