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Tata Consultancy Services, India's top IT services firm, said its CEO K Krithivasan earned 253.59 million rupees ($3.04 million) in financial year 2024, making him likely the lowest-paid CEO among top the four Indian IT firms.

The commissions tied to TCS' annual profit made up for a key chunk of Krithivasan's compensation, the company said in its annual report on Thursday. The company's profit rose 9% in the year, at a time the $254-billion IT sector struggled with weak client demand amid recession fears.

TCS is the first Indian IT firm to release its annual report for the previous financial year.

Infosys CEO Salil Parekh made $6.76 million in financial year 2023, while HCLTech CEO C Vijayakumar made $3.46 million and Wipro's former CEO Thierry Delaporte earned $10 million.

Wipro's new CEO Srinivas Pallia stands to earn between $4.5 million and $7 million annually for the next two years.

"Krithivasan's compensation looks comparatively lower than peers as the other top four were external candidates that joined the companies when they were in turmoil. Relatively, TCS has been a steady ship," said Shriram Subramanian, founder of proxy advisory firm InGovern Research Services.

Krithivasan was named TCS CEO on June 1, 2023, two months into the fiscal year. His compensation includes the salary paid to him for April and May, when he oversaw its banking, financial services and insurance business.

As of March 31, Krithivasan held 11,232 shares in the company, which are worth 44.67 million rupees as of Wednesday's close.

"TCS' compensation has always been conservative when compared to the market, because that is the Tata way of working where compensation alone isn't a key value proposition," said K Sudarshan, managing director at executive search firm EMA Partners.

Rajesh Gopinathan, Krithivasan's predecessor, had earned 291.6 million rupees in fiscal year 2023.