HCLTech chief executive C Vijayakumar was met with chants of “We want hike” from a section of employees as he walked onto the stage at the company’s 50th anniversary celebration in Chennai, in a video that has since gone viral across social media platforms.
The clip, shared widely on X, shows a packed auditorium as a large image of Vijayakumar appears on the venue’s main screen before his entrance. As employees cheer his arrival, a section of the audience starts chanting “We want hike,” and the chants grow louder as the CEO greets the crowd. Vijayakumar was seen continuing past the chants, greeting the audience with “Vanakkam Chennai.” The event was a private employee gathering, part of a golden jubilee celebration series HCLTech has hosted across multiple cities, with the Chennai edition featuring a live concert by Anirudh Ravichander.
HCLTech, founded in 1976, launched its months-long golden jubilee celebrations earlier in the year, beginning with an Arijit Singh concert in the Delhi-NCR region in April. The company employs around 227,181 people as of March 2026 and is India’s third-largest IT services firm by revenue.
The chant landed against a specific backdrop. Vijayakumar earned ₹174.86 crore in FY26, a 67% jump that made him the highest-paid chief executive among India’s IT services companies. His remuneration was 291.9 times the median remuneration of HCLTech’s global workforce, while the median employee remuneration rose 5.4% during the year. By comparison, TCS CEO K Krithivasan’s pay rose 6% to ₹28.1 crore, Infosys CEO Salil Parekh earned ₹82.6 crore, and Wipro CEO Srini Pallia’s total compensation fell 15.75% to $5.29 million.
Employee increments at HCLTech have moved more slowly. The company said it would roll out pay hikes for its workforce from October, following larger rival TCS, without disclosing the percentage. The timing matters for the wider sector too. Executive pay hikes across Indian IT stayed muted through FY26 as companies weighed AI-driven margin pressure and cautious client spending against retention needs. Industry-wide, the projected average salary hike across India Inc for 2026 stood at 8.9%, marginally below the previous cycle’s 9.1%.
Reaction to the video split online. Some viewed the chants as a reflection of growing frustration over salary hikes, while others argued such concerns should have been raised through formal internal channels rather than at a celebratory event. There is no clear confirmation that the chanting was directly linked to the CEO’s pay disclosure, though the juxtaposition of the two has driven much of the online discussion.
