Looking at in.indeed.com, you can make ₹10,00,000 or more per year. Up to as much as ₹25,00,000.

...but that's if you have "3-5 years of Experience in Cobol, IMS, DB2, JCL".

I imagine an entry-level job might pay ₹7,00,000 or so, if you can show sufficient coursework in COBOL?

Some quick googling shows that ₹10,00,000 is about $13,560 USD.

edit: I made the mistake of multiplying this by 12 originally since I didn't read carefully.

The commenter specifically said that the Indian salaries are per year. So they definitely underpay even for the Indian market, given salaries for non-COBOL.

One might ask, setting aside the task of getting accurate and representative numbers, because that's too much work, what do Indians believe is plausible?

Some people are surely trying to set expectations low, while others may be exaggerating what you can make with a few years of experience.

However, I've seen quite a few different sources claim an entry level developer makes around 4-10 lakh rupees a year. This makes me think they think their audience considers that good but not unbelievable.

And then when somebody claims you can make 60 lakh or more with 5 years experience, it makes me think that their audience knows roughly what US salaries are, whether or not the figure is realistic.

I think the confusion stems from the fact that India has a surplus of IT employees. The sheer number of universities and software graduates is hard for Western countries to imagine.

As such, you will see a massive salary range, anywhere from 3-60 lakhs per year. It’s hard to calculate based on experience - tenure, tech stack, or otherwise.

The lower end is dominated by body shops that take the bulk of offshored projects, since that’s exactly what Western companies want. The higher end is dominated by FAANG and VC funded startups. Moreover, the majority of companies do not have significant yearly raises, and jumping jobs is the often the only solution.

You're right, not sure how I missed that.