The increase outpaced the 4.5% salary growth recorded for men in comparable leadership roles, signalling a narrowing gender pay gap at the top.
The report, based on payroll data from over 190,000 employees across more than 6,500 companies, shows that women’s representation in leadership roles stood at 22% in 2025, a figure that is broadly stable but still far from parity.
Overall participation of women in the registered startup workforce dipped marginally to 31% from 32% a year earlier, underscoring that while pay equity is improving at senior levels, expanding the leadership pipeline remains a structural challenge.
“What stands out in 2025 is not just how fast AI and Gen Z are entering the workforce, but how decisively they are changing how companies operate,” said Ayush Bansal, vice president, RazorpayX. “Startups are no longer scaling by adding layers; they’re scaling by building sharper, more specialised teams that can move faster and deliver more. At the same time, the improving pay trajectory for women in leadership shows that companies are becoming more intentional about how they reward and retain critical talent.”
That intent is playing out alongside broader shifts in how startups hire and pay.
Highlighting a renewed focus on execution and operational depth, salary growth in 2025 was driven largely by the middle of the organisation, with managers and individual contributors seeing an 18.2% rise, compared with a more modest 2.7% increase for top leadership.
In line with last year’s growth, as overall salaries rose by an average of 7.23%, salary movements across functions in 2025 reveal a clear reprioritisation of execution-heavy roles over growth-facing ones.
According to the report, finance saw the strongest salary momentum at around 9.8%, followed by logistics and operations at about 6.4%. Human resources recorded roughly 4.7% growth, while technology roles saw a more modest increase of about 3.2%. Business roles were largely flat (0.4%), signalling stabilisation after earlier expansion, while sales and marketing emerged as the laggards at around 5.1%.
AI is another defining force.
Official AI roles nearly doubled, growing 96.3% year-on-year, with titles such as AI engineer, AI scientist and chief AI officer spreading beyond technology teams into finance, HR and operations.
At the same time, Gen Z became the dominant workforce cohort, accounting for over half (51.34%) of employees, particularly in revenue-facing and execution-heavy functions such as sales, finance and logistics.
Flexibility is also reshaping employment models.
Contract and on-demand roles surged 42% in 2025, evolving from stopgap hiring into a strategic talent-on-demand approach enabled by AI-driven role matching and modular teams.
The emphasis on efficiency was also evident in hiring and attrition trends.
Startups hired aggressively through 2025, with overall hiring rising 27.2%, but exits climbed in parallel to 19.4%, leaving net workforce growth at a modest 7.8%. Sales and marketing saw the highest hiring at 30%, but also high exits, resulting in net growth of 9%. Logistics and operations followed a similar pattern, with 28% hiring and 8% net growth, while finance and technology each recorded 8% net growth. HR lagged slightly, with net additions of 5%.