Paytm employees make big bucks, 200 turn millionaires
More than 100 employees of Paytm have become rupee millionaires, a major push for Softbank-backed digital payments and services company Paytm. The latest development is a result of a secondary sale, where several existing employees sold a portion of their shares to new members of Paytm.
Confirming the development to business news portal moneycontrol.com, Paytm said the company valuation has inched very close to the $10 billion-mark in the latest round.
This includes Rs 300 crore from the latest secondary sale of shares, which valued the digital payments and e-commerce platform at $10 billion. This is the company’s second sale of Esop (employee stock ownership plan) units after a Rs 200 crore cash out by staff in mid-2017.
The dollar millionaires include Paytm Canada’s chief executive Harinder Takhar, who cashed out over Rs 40 crore (about $6.3 million). Among the rupee millionaires was an office boy, who made over Rs 20 lakh in the stock sale, Paytm, run by One97 Communications Ltd, said on Monday.
“The secondary sale gave an opportunity to existing and former Paytm employees to liquidate their vested Esop units and create wealth. It also allowed various family offices and few Western long-hold funds to gain entry on the cap table with this round,” the company said, without disclosing the name of the
new investors.
“The company’s Esop pool isn’t restricted to top- or mid- level executives, but employees and office staff who have been around (with the company) from early days,” said a company spokesperson.
“There are another 100-150 more employees who are dollar millionaires on paper,” said founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, who liquidated 1% of his stock last year to raise Rs 325 crore for Paytm’s payments bank business.
-PTC News
