India ID Exchange · ID Tools
ID Salary Benchmark
What independent directors are actually paid on Indian listed boards, by sector — drawn from published annual reports, not from surveys or self-reported figures. Free, and no sign-up.
Director pay has two layers, and conflating them is the most common mistake in a fee negotiation. Sitting fees are paid per meeting and capped by law at ₹1 lakh a meeting. Profit-linked commission is uncapped in practice and is where almost the entire spread between a modest seat and a well-paid one sits.
Choose a sector
- Capital Goods195
- Financial Services190
- Fast Moving Consumer Goods94
- Chemicals92
- Healthcare91
- Information Technology75
- Services74
- Textiles73
- Automobile and Auto Components71
- Consumer Services66
- Consumer Durables54
- Construction46
- Realty45
- Media, Entertainment & Publication41
- Metals & Mining28
- Construction Materials24
- Oil, Gas & Consumable Fuels24
Healthcare
Across 234 listed companies in this sector. Sample size is shown for each row — coverage is partial, because not every annual report discloses a clean per-meeting fee.
| Lower quartile | Median | Upper quartile | Top decile | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Per board meetingn=50Sitting fee for attending one board meeting | ₹25,000 | ₹50,000 | ₹1 lakh | ₹1 lakh |
| Per committee meetingn=43Committee chairs commonly draw more than members | ₹25,000 | ₹50,000 | ₹1 lakh | ₹1 lakh |
| Annual, per independent directorn=58Sitting fees plus any profit-linked commission | ₹1.5 lakh | ₹4 lakh | ₹12.8 lakh | ₹30 lakh |
| Highest-paid ID at the companyn=58The ceiling, usually a committee chair or lead director | ₹2 lakh | ₹5.2 lakh | ₹18 lakh | ₹30 lakh |
Read the annual rows against the per-meeting rows. A director at the median earns ₹4 lakh a year in this sector; at the top decile, ₹30 lakh. Sitting fees hardly move across that range — the difference is commission, and commission is set by the Nomination and Remuneration Committee.
Ranges across companies, not offers. Figures are as disclosed in annual reports and will lag the current year.
A range tells you the market. Not the offer.
Foresight members see the disclosed figure for the specific company behind every seat on the Exchange — board fee, committee fee, and what its independent directors were actually paid last year — before deciding whether to apply. On a seat you would travel for, the gap between the median and the upper quartile is the whole decision.
How this is calculated
- · Figures are extracted from the remuneration disclosures in published annual reports of listed companies, keyed by BSE scrip.
- · Each row is a quartile distribution across companies, not an average. A median is far more honest than a mean here, because a handful of large private banks would otherwise drag every number upward.
- · A band is only published where at least twenty companies in the sector disclose that field. Sample size appears next to every row.
- · “Annual, per independent director” is total remuneration divided by the number of independent directors, so it blends sitting fees and commission.
- · No individual director or company is named anywhere in this tool.
Looking for the seats themselves? Board seats by committee, sector and city carries the live mandates, the qualification tests and the fee bands for each combination.