Indian companies and their obsession with "Hike on last drawn"

A lot of Indian companies have a pathological drive to always try and lowball candidates.

Sometimes I even jokingly tell recruiters that my expectation in 1000 crores, obviously you cannot pay that, so offer me your budget

Companies don’t really know how to gauge how valuable an engineer is so they use their last salary as a proxy to determine their worth.

Stopped applying to Indian companies altogether due to such terrible experience. Same lingo as usual. Plus ghosting is normal now, they dragged a process from July 5 (screening call) to Nov first week (final boss/hiring manager).
Had multiple followups from my end in between.
All this while the HR person who first contacted me hopped jobs (I only came to know it after her replacement contacted me 2 months later), my mails bounced when I tried to contact her post the assignment submission, expecting a calendar invite for the final round. Long story, I know. But rant over. Bullet dodged! Wouldn't wish it upon anyone. Especially the bit on bounced emails while following up.

You should hear people obsession with why did someone leave their last job. Dear HR you have requirement means just focus on hiring and retention.

Don't HR have a KPI of cost saving too? By saving a couple of Ls by negotiations, they can boost their performance ratings

MNCs with pay range are the best

Yeah it sucks and used to infuriate me a lot while negotiating salary. Now, I just tell them at the very beginning of the interview process that X is my current CTC, Y is my expected CTC. If you can match it then we can move forward, else bye bye. Saves everyone a lot of headache and mental gymnastics.