Finsamudra Desk
Kaizad Bharucha took home ₹17.14 crore against Sashidhar Jagdishan's ₹15.13 crore, as performance-linked bonuses and ESOP grants pushed the Deputy MD's pay past the CEO's.
HDFC Bank's latest annual report shows an unusual pay gap at the top: Deputy Managing Director Kaizad Bharucha earned ₹17.14 crore in FY26, more than MD & CEO Sashidhar Jagdishan's ₹15.13 crore.
The gap is explained by Bharucha's variable pay. His performance-linked bonus nearly doubled to ₹8.59 crore, and his ESOP grants rose fivefold to 6.23 lakh shares.
Jagdishan's FY26 was dominated by steering the post-merger integration of the HDFC empire, a long-horizon structural task. Bharucha, meanwhile, ran the wholesale banking engine that delivered immediate P&L results.
The outcome underscores that at HDFC Bank, compensation tracks measurable business execution over corporate title.
For lenders and their leadership teams, this is a live case study in how performance-linked pay structures can override hierarchy when a business unit delivers outsized, measurable P&L results — a signal relevant to how DSAs and connectors are compensated within lending networks too.
For finance professionals in banking, it reinforces that bonus and ESOP design, not base title, is increasingly the lever that determines actual take-home pay at senior levels.
More on HDFC Bank
Sources
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