Can someone explain India BDR comp to me? As I have been interviewing people, I have been finding there is high base, low variable. The amounts don't matter, that's not what I am talking about, more the % split between the two. For example, it might be 20 LPA base, 5 LPA variable. 80% of OTE is base. I have seen this consistently across companies. Why? The lowest performer makes 20 LPA and the best performer is maybe making 28 LPA. I am much more use to a high variable comp plan. Call it 15 LPA base and 15 LPA variable, so the lowest performer makes 15 LPA and the best performer is making over 30 LPA. The overall budget between these two is about the same, but the top performers make way more. In other words, the spread between the best and worst performer is much higher. When I hire in the US, folks are more used to higher variable percentage. When I interview in India, and ask about comp, their comp plans seem all to be very high base. Across many different companies I have seen this. I just don't understand,... why would companies do this? That is not the right thing to keep your best performers. I must be missing something?

It's a complicated question to answer. #following to see what others thing. I only have gut feeling around this i.e no data to back my statement just based on what I have seen and how people think about this.

My thesis is as follows: 1. The SDR ecosystem in India is at least a good 5-8 years behind in terms of maturity, available talent pool and number of SaaS orgs who have proven success at scale. So there is a more cautious approach that's prevailing here. 2. A good part of SDR success in India has come from an inside sales GTM motion rather than pure cold outbound. The effort involved and nature of job fundamentally changes between the two modes, so a very high variable/ high OTE is not preferred as their success is directly tied to inbound leads available to work. 3. Because of the not so mature ecosystem (in a relative scale), the available talent pool has more people who are in their formative years of their career and would prefer certainty/ predictability over huge variable. 4. Good SDRs quickly move to AE roles as long term success is higher which further limits positioning the SDR role really well to candidates. Having said that 80-20 is on the lower side. I have seen 70-30 as a more common pattern, but 50-50 is a non-starter for sure.

Thank you both. I think you both have a lot of merity. @Shrimithran when you say non-starter, do you mean for the company or the people? Why don't companies offer higher variable? What Niranjan says on cultural considerations on how most in India handle comp makes sense to me which is very different how people handle comp in US.

the thing is there is a not of lot of precedence in india where people have succeded in the 16+16 offer. Any average india job seeker would think like this. assuming they make 17+2 , for them 20+8 is a superior offer (its 15% increase in the base pay) and 50% increase in the overall

1. What is typical for the variable component? Meetings set / opportunities or a % of revenue? In the US it is only meetings set / opportunities, but I have seen a few people with % of revenue as the variable component. Is that the norm? 2. What is typical for paying out variable? Monthly along with base or quarterly?

That depends on the company again. In my previous company, for pre-sales it was primarily the number of meetings and 1% of the revenue generated from those meetings. However, that is not the norm. For SDRs/BDRs, I’ve heard most commonly that it is restricted to the number of meetings. 2. Variable for most tends to be year end. However, it can also be quarterly if agreed by both the employer and the employee. I’m yet to hear of a monthly pay out in India. @Dave Rigotti

Thanks again for all the comments here. We put out 2 offers, both were accepted, and both have started!