By the Sevetu team
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Short answer
Raise your maid's, cook's or driver's salary once a year, by at least the rate of inflation. Retail inflation was 5.54% in September 20261, so 5% to 10% is the sensible band for 2027, and more if she's taken on new work. Round up, give it on a fixed date, and write the rule into your agreement.
How much is fair?
Keep up with prices
Her rent, food and children's school fees went up this year too. Inflation was 5.54% in September 20261. A raise below that leaves her poorer than last year for the same work.
Pay for more work
If the job grew, the pay should too: an extra room, a second meal, a new baby, longer hours. That's a new job, not an annual raise. Price it separately.
Follow the legal floor
Where a state notifies a minimum wage for domestic work, check it each year. Karnataka's 2026 to 2027 rates for Bengaluru are ₹20,548.35 a month for cooking and ₹18,298.96 for housekeeping and cleaning2. A full-time salary below the floor is a problem whatever the raise.
When should the raise happen?
- On the work anniversary, the month she joined. Easy to remember, written once.
- Or every January. One date for everyone in the house.
- Not the week before Diwali. A raise discussed the week before Diwali isn't a negotiation. It's a deadline with sweets. Keep the festival bonus separate. How much Diwali bonus to give →
Our take: put the yearly increase in the agreement. Then neither of you has to raise it under pressure, and nobody has to feel awkward asking.
How to write it down
One line in the agreement does it:
"Salary increases by at least the year's retail inflation, rounded up to the nearest ₹500, every January. Extra work is priced separately when it's added."
The ten lines every agreement needs →
What if I can't afford a raise this year?
Say so, honestly and early, and say when you will. Offer what you can: a paid extra day off, help with a school fee, a later raise with a date. Don't let the year pass in silence; she'll notice, and she'll start looking.
Hire a maid → · Hire a cook → · Hire a driver →
Read next: maid salary in 2027 · cook salary in 2027
Questions people ask
At least the rate of retail inflation, which was 5.54% in September 2026. Between 5% and 10% is the sensible band, and more if she's taken on more work.
Once a year, on a fixed date: her work anniversary or every January. Keep it separate from the Diwali bonus.
There's no general legal rule for a raise in a private household. Some states notify a minimum wage for domestic work and revise it each year; full-time pay shouldn't fall below it.
Tell her early and honestly, say when there will be one, and offer what you can meanwhile, such as an extra paid day off.
Yes. An extra room, meal, child or longer hours is a bigger job. Price it when it's added, separately from the yearly raise.
Sources
- DD India, Retail inflation rises to 5.54% in September, 12 October 2026, read 12 November 2026: "India's retail inflation rose to 5.54% in September from 4.83% in August", per provisional Consumer Price Index data from the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. ddindia.co.in
- Government of Karnataka, Office of the Labour Commissioner, minimum wage rate sheet for 2026-27, Notification No. KAE 68 LWA 2022, Sl. No. 27, Zone 1: cooking and kitchen work ₹20,548.35 a month; housekeeping and cleaning ₹18,298.96 a month. karmikaspandana.karnataka.gov.in (PDF)
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Written by the Sevetu teamSevetu is a hiring marketplace for household work in India, operated by Fiel Private Limited. These guides come from the questions families and workers ask us. Nothing here is sponsored, and where a number has no defensible source we say so instead of inventing one. About Sevetu
