Paytm is one of the few large scale companies where hundreds of employees have made their fortune through employee stock options (ESOPs). Besides its staff, founders and employees of startups that were acquired by the SoftBank-backed firm have also made significant amounts through ESOPs.
Founding teams and employees of Plustxt, Shifu, Cube26, Little and Nearbuy have all benefited from such offerings. And now, Paytm has allotted equity shares to WeavedIn’s co-founders and employees, a company it had acquired in October 2018.
According to regulatory filings, Paytm has allotted 2,309 equity shares to eight WeavedIn employees under the ESOP Scheme 2008 at an exercise price of Rs 90 per share. As per Fintrackr’s estimate, the six employees along with two co-founders have been collectively allocated the ESOPs worth Rs 4.8 crore.
WeavedIn’s flagship product Weaver was a cloud based point of sale that used to help offline merchants with invoicing engine, inventory management and customer relationship management.
WeavedIn’s co-founders Jose kuttan and Jacob Pattara have been allotted Rs 1.73 crore and Rs 1.51 crore worth stocks respectively. The fresh allotment of ESOPs from Paytm has come after two months. Paytm had allotted equity shares worth $1.83 million (around Rs 14 crore) to its employees in May.
Paytm also announced Rs 250 crore worth ESOPs to its high-performing employees and new hires in April. Last year, the company had added Rs 300 crore to its revised ESOPs scheme. The new ESOP scheme will have a maximum vesting period of 5 years.
According to Fintrackr estimate, the company’s ESOP scheme makes up about 3.72% stake as per Paytm’s shareholding pattern. Its ESOP pool in total has been valued at about Rs 3,150 crores. Apart from Paytm, Byju’s, Ola and Swiggy have ESOPs pool that value over Rs 1500 crore each.