Who India's Automakers Paid The Most in Their Record Sales Year?

Hero MotoCorp Executive Chairman Pawan Munjal was the highest-paid executive among India's listed automakers in fiscal 2026, drawing Rs 122.31 crore in a year the industry retailed a record 2.97 crore vehicles.

Munjal's pay, up 11.79% from a year earlier, was nearly double the next-largest packages and equalled 789 times the earnings of Hero's median employee — the worker exactly in the middle of the company's payroll, who made Rs 15.51 lakh. It also amounted to 2.32% of Hero's Rs 5,268 crore annual profit, the largest such share among the companies reviewed.

TVS Motor Chairman and Managing Director Sudarshan Venu ranked second at Rs 64.22 crore, a 46% increase that was the steepest raise among the top earners. Mahindra & Mahindra Group CEO Anish Shah followed at Rs 64.06 crore, though Rs 41.77 crore of that was the value of stock options he cashed in during the year, pay awarded earlier and exercised now rather than granted for FY26. Bajaj Auto's Rajiv Bajaj drew Rs 58.87 crore, up just 0.50%, and Mahindra's Rajesh Jejurikar Rs 50.89 crore.

The disclosures, required under Indian company law in each firm's annual report, land against the industry's strongest year on record. Retail sales rose 13.30% in FY26. Industry experts attributes the surge to the September 2025 GST rate cut, which lowered taxes on most of the vehicle and turned a sluggish April–August into a festive-quarter boom.

Hero paid the most; it didn't grow the fastest. The company held its position as India's largest two-wheeler retailer at 60.83 lakh units, up 11.7% per FADA, though its market share slipped to 28.40% from 28.83%. Revenue rose 14.9% to a record Rs 46,830 crore and profit 14.3% — solid, but the slowest growth among the three two-wheeler majors. Munjal's raise, at 11.79%, tracked below both. Hero also ran without a fulltime CEO for many months; Harshavardhan Chitale took the role only in January 2026.

TVS grew the fastest and paid the biggest raise. Venu's 46% increase came on top of the strongest operating year in the sample: revenue up 30.4% to Rs 47,270 crore, profit up 37% and retail market share up 140 basis points to 18.89%, the biggest share gain among listed two-wheeler makers. The company's own disclosures show the reward was concentrated at the top: managerial pay across TVS rose 44%, against 13% for all other employees, while the median worker's pay rose 6%, the lowest increase disclosed by any OEM reviewed.

Bajaj had the profits, and froze the pay anyway. Rajiv Bajaj's near-flat Rs 58.87 crore came in a year his company's consolidated profit jumped 47% to Rs 10,744 crore. The counterpoint sits in FADA's share tables: Bajaj's two-wheeler retail share fell to 10.50% from 11.41%, and its three-wheeler share — the company's traditional stronghold — slipped to 34.71% from 35.85%. Bajaj was also the only automaker reviewed where staff raises, averaging 12.44%, outpaced the boardroom's 3.01%.

Mahindra's number is inflated by timing; its underlying raise tracked profit. Strip out the exercised options and Shah's increase was 29.97%, almost exactly matching M&M's 31.9% profit growth — the closest pay-to-performance alignment in the sample. The operating year supported it: record SUV sales of 6.6 lakh units, a 22.2% jump in PV retails that carried Mahindra past Tata Motors into second place in India's car market by FADA's count, and share gains in commercial vehicles, three-wheelers and tractors simultaneously.

The outlier is Ashok Leyland. The truckmaker doesn't publish its executives' pay in rupees, but the disclosed percentages were the industry's steepest: a 48.27% raise for MD and CEO Shenu Agarwal and 57.58% for the CFO, in a year profit grew 7.9%, the slowest in the sample.

And the market leader is missing from the table. Tata Motors, India's largest CV maker and the No. 3 car retailer, published no usable pay comparisons for either of its demerged entities: employees and chief executives alike transferred in on October 1, 2025, making full-year figures impossible.