On 18 December 2025, Bharti Airtel’s board approved Shashwat Sharma as managing director and chief executive of Airtel India from 1 January 2026, and moved Gopal Vittal, who had held the job, to executive vice chairman. That decision splits the company’s chief executive pay for the year to 31 March 2026 in two. The annual report gives ₹217,291,098 for Vittal’s nine months and ₹18,833,025 for Sharma’s three.
The ₹217,291,098 is made up of ₹130,248,084 in salary and allowances, ₹87,036,294 in performance-linked incentive and ₹6,720 in perquisites. Two notes printed under the table describe money that sits outside it.
Two amounts the table leaves out
The first note says that during the year Vittal was paid ₹111,599,366 as performance-linked incentive for 2024-25, “which is not included above”. The bonus he received for the previous year and the incentive counted in this year’s table are separate entries.
The second note records that he was granted 148,275 new stock options during the year, which vest over up to three years and can be converted into shares at any time up to seven years from the grant. It then says the table “does not include perquisite value of ₹802,270,354 towards the value of stock options exercised during the year”. That is the value placed on options from earlier grants that he converted into shares in 2025-26.
Read together, the report carries three figures for Vittal’s year: ₹217,291,098 in the table, ₹111,599,366 of the previous year’s incentive paid during it, and ₹802,270,354 from options exercised. On our arithmetic they come to ₹1,131,160,818. The report itself does not add them up, and each one is a different kind of payment.
Two rules across the Nifty 50
Companies in the Nifty 50 split on whether option gains belong in the headline figure. Infosys includes them: ₹50.75 crore of the ₹82.60 crore it printed for Salil Parekh came from stock units he exercised. Larsen & Toubro and Mahindra & Mahindra count them too. ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank and Hindalco leave them out, as Airtel does. A comparison of two chief executives’ headline pay is only like for like when both companies follow the same rule.
Sharma’s first three months
Sharma’s ₹18,833,025 for January to March 2026 is made up of ₹13,848,477 in salary and allowances, ₹4,972,968 in incentive and ₹11,580 in perquisites. The report says no stock options were granted to him or exercised by him in that period. Both entries, with their full breakdowns, sit in our FY26 CEO pay table.
Sources
- Bharti Airtel, Integrated Report and Annual Financial Statements 2025-26, Board’s Report, details of directors’ remuneration and notes 4 and 5, and the board’s approval of 18 December 2025
- Infosys, Annual Report 2026, remuneration to directors in fiscal 2026
- Larsen & Toubro, Integrated Annual Report 2025-26, Annexure D, remuneration of directors
- Mahindra & Mahindra, Annual Report 2025-26, remuneration to the whole-time directors
- ICICI Bank, Annual Report 2025-26, remuneration paid to executive directors
- Kotak Mahindra Bank, Report on Corporate Governance 2025-26, remuneration of executive directors
- Hindalco Industries, Annual Report 2025-26, Corporate Governance Report, remuneration of directors
