Wipro Consumer head's salary exceeds Premji's

And former vice-chairman Vivek Paul took home $1.3 million.

BANGALORE: Guess who gets the highest salary package in Wipro?

No, it is not Azim Premji, the chairman of the Rs 10,610 crore group.

With an annual salary of $142,086 (Rs 65.36 lakh), Vineet Agrawal, president, Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting, earns $45,311 more than Premji.

While Premji's annual salary is $96,775, he earned incentives of $3,92,195 for the year 2005-06, the NYSE-listed Wipro said in a filing to the US Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC). Premji, who owns 84% stake in Wipro, earns a substantial amount through dividends.

Agrawal earned $5551 as incentives, which is paid for achieving pre-determined profit targets.

The soft spoken Agrawal heads a division that contributes 5% to Wipro's total revenues of Rs 10,610 crore ($2.38 billion). But, the consumer care and lighting division is close to Premji's heart.

Wipro, which started with the hydrogenated vegetable fat business, has transformed itself into global IT entity. The Bangalore-based third largest software exporter earns 94% of its revenues from the new-economy business.

Vivek Paul, who quit as Wipro's vice-chairman in June last year, earned $2,68,765 and a commission of over $ one million, the company said.

Premji and Paul were paid commissions at the rate of 0.1% on incremental profits and 0.3% on net profits, respectively.

Suresh Vaswani, who heads Wipro Infotech, the India, West Asia and Asia Pacific arm of the IT giant earned a salary of $126,482 and a commission of $47,863.

Wipro CFO Suresh Vaswani takes home a salary package of $123,624, while he earned incentives of $51,266 last year. Wipro CEO A L Rao's salary was $1.2 lakh with additional incentives of $49,000.