Indian data centre CEOs see fatter pay packages as AI and cloud expansion booms
According to Mint, pay for leaders of India's top data centre firms has risen alongside revenue, though it still trails pay at major IT outsourcers.
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what happened
Mint, which is published by HT Digital Content Services, reports that heads of India's leading data centre companies are earning rising packages as the sector booms. Equinix's India managing director Manoj Paul was the top earner with annual pay of Rs 5.91 crore, though that was down 13% from FY24. The company reported its slowest annual revenue growth since he took charge in September 2021.
At Nxtra by Airtel, CEO Ashish Arora's pay rose broadly in line with the firm's earnings growth. At ESDS Software Solution, chairman and managing director Piyush Somani's net pay more than doubled from Rs 83.8 lakh in FY24 to Rs 1.8 crore in FY26, while revenue grew 65%. The Indian data centre industry is valued at $5.5 billion, and companies have committed over $250 billion in cumulative investment over the past 12 months.
Several firms did not disclose salaries, and for others Mint could not establish how pay changed. Even so, the latest known packages for all named executives exceed Rs 1 crore.
why it matters
The story suggests pay in the data centre sector is increasingly tied to delivering capacity on time and executing large projects, not just to revenue. For investors it signals rapid expansion in India's market, yet these packages remain well below the Rs 27 crore to Rs 390 crore paid to the top executives of the 10 largest tech outsourcers.
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- Data centre bosses cash in on India's AI and cloud expansion with handsome pay packages — Moody's, 7 November 2026 at 07:49 UTC
prepared by the newsmetry newsroom with ai assistance from the sources listed below. not investment advice.
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