The crorepati club: 169 executives of HUL, most below 40, drew 8-digit salaries last year

MUMBAI: Srirup Mitra, 33, a category head at Hindustan Unilever, took home more than a crore in annual salary last year. He isn’t really an exception.

India’s top consumer goods firm has about 169 executives who drew eight-digit salaries last year, six times more than its closest rival ITC’s 23 crorepati employees, and half of them are less than 40 years of age. The HUL number is also 50% higher than IT major Infosys’ 123 eight-digit salary earners and more than double of Wipro’s 70.

These 169 managers, representing just 1% of HUL’s total workforce, drew home a combined salary of Rs 310 crore, according to the firm’s annual report.


This is more than the total employee spends of mid-sized rivals such as Marico, Godrej Consumer and Procter & Gamble Health and Hygiene. "For the kind of talent HUL looks for, the company has to pay top dollars as supply is limited and they have to retain them," said Aditya Narayan Mishra, chief executive at CEIL HR Services, adding that HUL has the highest number of crorepati employees in India.

"Since they also create strong leadership within their organisation, retaining them becomes crucial," he said. HUL is often referred to as a ‘CEO Factory’, having contributed over 400 CEOs within the corporate world.

Despite ecommerce edging out FMCG as the hottest career destination for B-school students, HUL still remains the most preferred company overall in the list for the graduating batch of 2015, fourth year in a row and as a dream company across sectors for the sixth year running, as per Nielsen Campus Track Business School 2015 survey.
"At HUL, the ability to identify, hire, groom and retain the best talent has been honed and developed over several decades and remains one of the most important agenda of my leadership team," Sanjiv Mehta, CEO and MD at Hindustan Unilever, had told ET in March this year. Salaries at HUL are partly linked to the company’s performance in sales and profitability, say analysts.

During 2014-15, HUL posted 9% sales growth compared to 7% in the overall FMCG growth with 90% of its portfolio gaining market share. Nitin Mathur, consumer goods analyst at Societe Generale, said: "HUL is unarguably the leader when it comes to understanding the Indian consumption patterns, across economic strata.

Any competitor, either incumbents or startups, would like to leverage on this experience by hiring their executives."
ET in May had reported that ecommerce companies could roll out 500 jobs with salaries of more than Rs 1 crore each this year, according to estimates by five search firms, including RGF Executive Search and Longhouse Consulting.

Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal, Ola, Uber, Quikr, CommonFloor, Yepme, OLX, Junglee, FashionAndYou, Hungama, BookMyShow, Jabong, Cleartrip and Lenskart were among companies offering jobs with one-crore-plus salaries, though the first three account for a big chunk of such offers, officials at several headhunting firms.