MUMBAI: When Srirup Mitra, 33, a category head at Hindustan Unilever, took home more than a crore (ten million rupees) in annual salary last year, he wasn’t all that unique.

Hindustan Unilever has about 169 executives who drew eight-digit salaries (100,00,000 +) 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.

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 Ecnomic Times recently. Salaries at HUL are partly linked to the company’s performance in sales and profitability, say analysts.

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 what their rivals such as Marico, Godrej Consumer and Procter & Gamble Health and Hygiene spendon salary for the total number of employees.

A business daily quoted Aditya Narayan Mishra, chief executive at CEIL HR Services, “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. 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.

Nielsen Campus Track Business School 2015 survey says that 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.

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.”

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, say officials at several headhunting firms.

[based on media reports]

  development, industry