NEW YORK: Indra Nooyi, the Indian-origin CEO of beverages major PepsiCo, earns over 81 times more than the world’s richest man Warren Buffett in terms of her annual pay packet, according to data compiled by executive search firm Equilar for the New York Times.

Nooyi earned $14.74 million in 2007 as against $0.18 million drawn by Buffett who heads Berkshire Hathway, which is into life insurance and annuity sales, among others. Another India-origin CEO Vikram Pandit, who heads global banking giant Citigroup, takes home a salary that is about 17 times that of Buffett.

In 2007, Pandit earned $3.16 million. Further, Rajiv L. Gupta, an India-origin CEO heading the speciality chemicals maker Rohm & Haas earns a compensation of USD 7.26 million, nearly 40 per cent higher than that of Buffett. Equilar analyzed the compensation data in the corporate filings of 200 large public firms in the US with revenues of over $6.5 billion. Further, data on only those firms that had filed their proxies by March 28 were considered. Meanwhile, Steve Jobs, the CEO of iPod maker Apple, is at the bottom of the list and has a base salary of $1.

The total compensation figures represent the sum of base salary, discretionary and performance-based cash bonuses, option awards and stock awards, among others. "The annual salaries cited for chief executives who served only part of the year was derived either from information disclosed by the firm about the new chief, or by prorating their salaries based on the time they served in the position," a re port in the newspaper said.