Indian Data Centre Bosses Draw Multi-Crore Salaries Amid AI Boom

Top executives heading data centres in India are taking home multi-crore annual packages as the country's $5.5 billion industry expands rapidly to meet surging demand from cloud computing and artificial intelligence firms.

Executive Pay Details

Manoj Paul of Equinix India drew the highest annual pay at ₹ 5.91 crore, though this figure was down 13% from the previous financial year alongside slower revenue growth. Ashish Arora of Nxtra by Airtel saw his salary reach ₹ 3.1 crore, rising at a compounded annual growth rate of nearly 10% over four years. Meanwhile, Piyush Somani of ESDS Software Solution doubled his net pay to ₹ 1.8 crore, outpacing his firm's 65% revenue growth to ₹ 472.2 crore. Several other operators including Yotta Data Services, NTT India, STT Global Data Centres, and CtrlS Datacenters did not disclose individual executive salaries.

Industry Growth and Context

Companies have committed cumulative investments exceeding $250 billion over the past year to build out domestic data centre and AI infrastructure. Industry experts note that executive pay is closely tied to timely project execution and bringing new capacity online. Despite these multi-crore figures, data centre salaries remain well below the ₹ 27 crore to ₹ 390 crore earned by the heads of India's largest IT services firms. Analysts expect this gap to narrow as data centre operators continue posting double-digit growth.

Context

Data centres form the physical backbone of the digital economy, housing massive rows of computer servers that process and store cloud data and power modern artificial intelligence models. As global technology companies expand their digital footprint in India, managing the immense power supply, cooling, and construction requirements of these facilities has made executive leadership a high-value skill.