There has been a stark gender pay gap displayed by the unicorn startups in the salaries of their founders!
Gender Disparity in Founder Salaries at Indian Unicorns
As per the report by PrivateCircle Research, as against Rs 8.5 crore given to their male counterparts, the average female founders are taking home only Rs 1.1 crore.
Is FY23, male founders earned a median of Rs 1.8 crore, whereas female founders earned Rs 1 crore. Notably, what is also concerning is the absence of women directors at unicorn companies.
As per PrivateCircle’s analysis, 57 Indian unicorns had no women on their boards as of March 2024.
There has also been a rise in the median salary of founders; this is reflected in the fact that as against Rs 1.2 crore in FY22, founders took home Rs 1.5 crore in FY23.
The same number was much lower, around Rs 90 lakh in FY20 and FY21.
Founder Salaries in Indian Start-ups: Contrasts and Trends
However, there has been an exception in the face of FirstCry’s Supam Maheshwari who took home a whopping Rs 200 crore in FY23, on the very contrary, there is Slice’s Ranjan Bajaj, who took home just Rs 12 during the same period.
Notably, as per the company’s draft red herring prospectus, Maheshwari’s salary was slashed by 49% during the first three-quarters of FY24.
For the first 3 quarters of FY24, his total remuneration was Rs 77.5 crore.
He is also behind single-handedly pulling up Pune’s average for unicorn founders to Rs 3.7 crores highest across India.
With a median salary of Rs 3.5 crore, it was the media and entertainment unicorn founders who earned the highest salary in FY23.
Although founders from logistics unicorns fetched Rs 1.9 crore in media salary, the sector came in at the top with an average salary of Rs 12.4 crore.
Those in edtech space, made a median of Rs 1.6 crore.
Given the fact that the founder salaries for foreign registered companies has been excluded, the data is limited, especially provided when most of Saas unicorns have their companies registered abroad.
