How to respond to a lowball offer or a hike below expectations in India
A hike offer that's well under 20% isn't automatically an insult, but it isn't automatically fair either. Here's how to tell the difference and respond without burning the offer.
You switch jobs expecting a real jump, and the number that comes back is a 10% hike, or flat, or — occasionally — a cut dressed up in a higher-sounding CTC. Before you react, it helps to know what's actually typical in the Indian market right now, because "low" is doing a lot of work in that sentence and it isn't always accurate.
What a "normal" hike actually looks like
Job-switch hikes in India commonly land somewhere in the 20-30% range for most roles. Moves between IT services companies tend to sit toward 20-35%. A jump from an IT services company into a product company can run considerably higher, sometimes 40-100%, because the base compensation structures at product companies are simply built differently. In-demand skill areas — AI/ML, cloud, security — can pull 50-80% in a strong market. These are reference points from how the market has generally behaved, not promises, and they shift a lot by role, level, city, and company size, so treat them as a sanity check, not a script.
Against that backdrop, an offer under 15-20% isn't automatically a lowball — it depends on what you're actually moving from and to. A move within the same company type, same seniority band, same broad market, landing at 15% might be entirely fair. The same 15% landing on a move from services to product, or into a hot-skill role, is genuinely below where the market sits.
Figure out if it's actually low, or just feels low
Before you push back, do the comparison properly rather than on gut feel. Check what similar roles at similar companies are paying at your level — job postings with visible bands, recruiter conversations for other roles you're in process with, and honest conversations with people actually doing the job now are more useful than aggregated salary-survey averages, which tend to smooth out the exact variation that matters to your specific case. If you compared CTC to CTC without breaking either number down into fixed and variable, do that too — a headline hike that looks thin can sometimes be explained by a much better fixed-to-variable split than what you have now, and a headline hike that looks generous can hide a heavy variable component that rarely pays out in full. How to negotiate a CTC offer covers that breakdown in detail.
How to push back without sounding like you're just complaining
Lead with the market data, not the feeling. "Based on what I'm seeing for this role and level at comparable companies, the range tends to run closer to X — is there room to move toward that?" is a specific, checkable claim. "This feels low" is not, and it invites a dismissive response rather than a negotiation. If you have a competing offer or a specific number from a comparable role you're interviewing for elsewhere, that's stronger still — you don't need to name the company, just the range.
If the hike is low relative to your current CTC specifically because your current CTC itself is below market — which happens more often than people expect, especially if you haven't negotiated in a few cycles — say that directly: "I think my current compensation is below where the market has moved for this role, which is part of why this hike looks smaller than it should. Can we talk about the target range for the role itself rather than a percentage over my current number?" This is also exactly why avoiding the current-CTC question in the first place matters — see salary negotiation tips for India for how to deflect it earlier in the process, before a low anchor gets set.
When to actually walk away
If, after pushing on the fixed component, the variable structure, and any non-salary levers like a joining bonus or an early appraisal date, the number still sits meaningfully below what comparable roles are paying — and the company shows no real flexibility on any of it — that's useful information about how compensation conversations will go for the rest of your time there, not just this one. A single low offer with room to move is a negotiation. A low offer with no movement anywhere is often a preview.
Practicing the pushback before it's real
Reading the market ranges is the easy part. Actually saying "I think this is below market for the role" to a recruiter, on a call, without hedging it into nothing, is the part that takes practice. Prepair's salary negotiation practice puts you through that exact scenario against an AI recruiter that opens with a number and pushes back the way a real one would — turn-based, roughly eight exchanges, typed or spoken. It's Pro-tier, USD pricing only for now, and it's built to rehearse the conversation and the pushback-handling, not to tell you what the market rate actually is for your specific role — that research is still yours to do first.