New Delhi, July 19 -- Bharti Airtel has moderated its employee salary hikes in FY25, with the average salary increase dropping to 8% from 8.7% in FY24, according to the company's annual report Vice chairman & managing director Gopal Vittal's pay rose 9%, after increasing more than 10% in FY24 and FY23. Vittal drew a salary of Rs.20.2 crore in FY25. Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman of Bharti Airtel, drew a salary of Rs.32.5 crore, an increase of 0.9%. Soumen Ray, the chief financial officer, saw his salary increase 9.5% to Rs.6.2 crore, compared to 13.7% in FY24. The moderation in increments comes even as Bharti Airtel clocked a consolidated revenue of Rs.1.7 lakh crore in FY25, up 10.4% from the previous year. Airtel achieved a record-high revenue market share of 40% in mobile services during the year, the annual report quoted Mittal as saying. In FY24, revenue from operations rose 8% to Rs.1.5 lakh crore. Median remuneration falling In the past two years the median remuneration of the company's employees - other than board of directors and key managerial personnel - declined. During FY25, the median employee remuneration fell 3.95%, after dropping 5.6% in FY24. Bharti Airtel said the revision was guided by the company's reward philosophy, external competitiveness and benchmarking, and was in keeping with its compensation and appraisal policy. "The increase in managerial remuneration is within the overall limits approved by the shareholders of the company," Bharti Airtel said in the report. The median remuneration of employees other than managerial personnel in FY25 was Rs.8.38 lakh for male employees and Rs.8.17 lakh for female employees. In FY24 it was Rs.8.61 lakh for male employees and Rs.9 lakh for female employees. "This is primarily on account of changes in the employee mix and internal role transitions/ movements across the group during the year, and hence, does not reflect any adverse impact on Company's overall compensation philosophy or actual remuneration levels," the company said. During the year, Airtel spent Rs.6,309 crore on employee benefits, or about 3.6% of its revenue from operations. In the previous year, employee benefit expenses were Rs.5,323 crore, according to its financial statements. At the end of March, Airtel had 20,310 employees on roll and 73,929 contractual employees, compared to 19,198 employees on roll and 65,446 contractual employees in FY24, according to the annual reports of the two years. After incurring huge capital expenditure on the 5G rollout, Airtel said it was taking a disciplined approach to capex and financial fitness to create long-term value....