Temasek Holdings buys secondary shares in Ola, turns many employees into crorepatis

During this monsoon season, it’s raining moolah for early and former employees of Ola. Singapore-based Temasek Holdings Pvt Ltd has bought secondary shares of worth $30 million from the employees of the cab-hailing company.

In the secondary transaction, Temasek bought the shares at a valuation of between $2.5-3 billion, according to a Mint report.

Besides, Ola is planning to raised funds from Temasek in a separate deal, which will be a combination of primary and secondary capital. As part of the deal, Temasek is expected to purchase about $150-200 million of secondary shares in Ola.

Under the deal, some old investors will be able to reap financial benefits.

Entrackr sources have confirmed some of the early investors in the company, including Kunal Bahl, Rohit Bansal, Anupam Mittal and Rehan Yar Khan are planning to take partial exits from the company.

Last year in October, Flipkart repurchased employee stock options (ESOPs) of worth $100 million from over 3,000 employees, including Myntra and Jabong. This was the fourth instance in the past five years when the Bengaluru-based e-commerce company bought ESOPs from its employees.

Early January this year, fintech platform Paytm, in a secondary sale of its shares of worth $47.2 million to Canada-based VC firm Discovery Capital at a valuation of $10 billion, turned some 300 hundred former and existing Paytm employees into millionaires.

Recently, online food delivery company Swiggy received approval from the board to repurchase employee stocks worth $4 million.

Swiggy has 3.4 per cent of the company’s stocks in the form of ESOPs and was worth $23.9 million a few months back when it raised $100 million from Naspers and Meituan at a valuation of $705 million in February.

In the past few months, the not-so valued ESOPs has suddenly gained all the value as the companies are buying it back to gain more control over the company or making the secondary sale.