Bharti Airtel slashes pay hikes for employees, including top brass | Company Business News-OxBig News Network

Bharti Airtel has moderated its employee salary hikes in FY25, with the average salary increase dropping to 8% from 8.7% in FY24, according to the company’s annual report

Vice chairman & managing director Gopal Vittal’s pay rose 9%, after increasing more than 10% in FY24 and FY23. Vittal drew a salary of ₹20.2 crore in FY25. Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman of Bharti Airtel, drew a salary of ₹32.5 crore, an increase of 0.9%. Soumen Ray, the chief financial officer, saw his salary increase 9.5% to ₹6.2 crore, compared to 13.7% in FY24.

The moderation in increments comes even as Bharti Airtel clocked a consolidated revenue of ₹1.7 trillion in FY25, up 10.4% from the previous year. Airtel achieved a record-high revenue market share of 40% in mobile services during the year, the annual report quoted Mittal as saying. In FY24, revenue from operations rose 8% to ₹1.5 trillion.

Median remuneration falling

In the past two years the median remuneration of the company’s employees – other than board of directors and key managerial personnel – declined. During FY25, the median employee remuneration fell 3.95%, after dropping 5.6% in FY24.

Bharti Airtel said the revision was guided by the company’s reward philosophy, external competitiveness and benchmarking, and was in keeping with its compensation and appraisal policy. “The increase in managerial remuneration is within the overall limits approved by the shareholders of the company,” Bharti Airtel said in the report.

The median remuneration of employees other than managerial personnel in FY25 was ₹8.38 lakh for male employees and ₹8.17 lakh for female employees. In FY24 it was ₹8.61 lakh for male employees and ₹9 lakh for female employees. “This is primarily on account of changes in the employee mix and internal role transitions/ movements across the group during the year, and hence, does not reflect any adverse impact on Company’s overall compensation philosophy or actual remuneration levels,” Airtel said.

During the year, Airtel spent ₹6,309 crore on employee benefits, or about 3.6% of its revenue from operations. In the previous year, employee benefit expenses were ₹5,323 crore, according to its financial statements.

At the end of March, Airtel had 20,310 employees on roll and 73,929 contractual employees, compared to 19,198 employees on roll and 65,446 contractual employees in FY24, according to the annual reports of the two years.

Discipline on capex

After incurring huge capital expenditure on the 5G rollout, Airtel said it was taking a disciplined approach to capex and financial fitness to create long-term value. “Over the last five years, Airtel has made meaningful investments of over ₹1.6 trillion in expanding its digital infrastructure,” Mittal said. He added that the company took a bold and calculated decision to deploy non-standalone 5G network architecture (5G NSA), resulting in significant savings in capex and network opex.

Mittal added that the company was ready to transition to a standalone 5G network. “This will happen when 5G becomes the mainstay wireless technology, while we continue to conduct pilot testing,” he said. 5G Standalone (SA) runs entirely on new 5G technology, while 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) relies on existing 4G networks to deliver 5G speeds.

In FY25, Airtel incurred capex of ₹30,300 crore as compared to ₹33,300 crore in FY24 and more than ₹40,000 crore in FY23.

Tariff repair needed

With ₹55,300 crore of operating free cash flow, Airtel paid ₹37,300 crore in licence fees and spectrum use charges to the government. It also paid ₹28,900 crore towards spectrum obligations, including annual and prepayment of past spectrum dues.

“Our focus remains on growing our postpaid base, driving smartphone upgrades and expanding international roaming penetration. 5G devices account for 85% of total smartphone shipments and we continue to capture our fair share of the 5G device market,” Vittal said in the annual report.

However, he reiterated that the company needed further tariff repair to ensure a sustainable improvement in the return on capital employed. Tariff repair refers to increasing telecom tariffs to improve the financial health and profitability of telecom companies. This is often done to address factors such as rising operational costs, the need for investment in network upgrades (like 5G), and to achieve better return ratios.