Razorpay Announces Its Third And Largest ESOP Sale Of $10 Mn Existing and former employees of the company will be eligible to sell up to 33 per cent of their vested ESOP shares

Bengaluru-based fintech unicorn Razorpay on Thursday announced its third employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) buyback program worth $10 million for its 750 employees.

All existing and former employees of the company who hold vested stocks will be eligible to sell up to 33 per cent of their vested ESOP shares.

Two of its key investors, Sequoia Capital India and GIC, will be the buyers involved in this development.

The share sale is expected to benefit employees across roles - from team leaders to support executives to administrative staff. Its 1350 people team raised their $100 million in Series D funding round in October last year, the full-stack financial services company said.

"We have always said and believed that our employees are the reason for every success that we have had. They turned an unprecedented year into one of the strongest years for Razorpay. And this ESOP Buyback is our little way of giving back to the employees for their contribution and a form of wealth creation for all, as it is important for us to ensure that our employees also grow along with the company," said Harshil Mathur, chief executive officer, and co-founder, Razorpay, while commenting on announcing its third ESOP Buyback for employee welfare.

The startup has been said to be one of the very few early-stage companies when its first liquidity event through ESOP encashment occurred in November 2018 for its 140 employees then. The transaction was done at a 50 per cent premium to the valuation. The second ESOP sale event occurred in November 2019, during which approximately 400 employees were eligible. To date, the company has awarded ESOPs to 1000 employees, with current employees holding a majority share, the platform shared.

"Our current and former employees, even as young as 23, will be eligible for this incentive, irrespective of ranks. The compensation will be rolled out to all our employees, be it software engineers, product managers, customer experience agents, or administrative staff. I believe there's no better time than now to recognize the team for all their efforts and have trusted us in this journey," Mathur further stated.

Recently, the company also announced to hire 650 employees across engineering, product, customer experience, sales, and marketing roles, in the next year. The platform's hiring plans are being driven by more investment in product development, customer experience, and new additions to the existing product suite so that the company caters to the ever-evolving payment and banking needs of SMEs and MSMEs.

Currently powering online payments for more than five million small and large businesses such as Facebook, IRCTC, CRED, Zerodha, Indigo among others, Razorpay has clocked in a healthy growth rate of 40-45 per cent month-on-month and is geared to increase its merchant count to 10 million by next year.

The company has registered threefold growth in payment volume through SMBs that went online for the first time during COVID-19 in 2020.

Marquee investors such as GIC, Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital India, Ribbit Capital, Matrix Partners, Y Combinator and MasterCard have invested a total of $206.5 million through Series A, B, C and D funding round. Around 33 angel investors have invested in its mission to simplify payments and banking and redefine how finance works in India.