SaaS unicorn BrowserStack announces ESOP buyback worth $50 Mn

SaaS company BrowserStack, which recently concluded a $200 million round, has announced its second employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) buyback program worth $50 million. This is one of the largest ESOP buyback programs by an Indian-origin startup at one go in the recent past.

Browserstack’s first ESOP buyback program was executed in February this year. According to the company, the latest buyback witnessed the participation of over 100 employees.

“The exponential growth witnessed by BrowserStack has been made possible because of the perseverance and dedication of our people,” said Ritesh Arora, co-founder, and CEO of BrowserStack. “We grow when our people grow and we would like to thank them for playing a significant role in the company’s success and believing in our vision of becoming the testing infrastructure for the internet.”

Responding to Entrackr's queries, Browserstack said that the latest ESOP buyback program will be executed at a valuation of $4 billion. The company was valued at $4 billion when it raised its last equity round. In terms of valuation, Browserstack is only behind Postman and public-listed company Freshworks in the SaaS ecosystem. 

Browserstack will join the likes of well-funded companies like Udaan, ShareChat, Razorpay, CRED, Licious, Classplus and HealthifyMe which have already bought back ESOP held by their employees. 

As per Fintrackr’s data, around a dozen companies announced their ESOP buyback plans worth more than $100 million in the first half of 2021.

Browserstack claims to be the world’s leading software testing platform powering over two million tests every day across 15 global data centres. Besides Mumbai, Browserstack has offices in Dublin and New York. The company’s Indian subsidiary Browserstack Software Private Limited provides technical support and software development services to the holding company.

According to Fintrackr, the Indian entity collects all of its revenue from the US-based holding entity and saw its revenue from operations grow by 70% from Rs 88.7 crore in FY19 to Rs 150.5 crore in FY20. During FY20, its profit grew by 118% to Rs 27.82 crore from Rs 12.72 crore in FY19. The Indian entity is yet to file its annual financial report for FY21.

Update: The story has been updated to include Browserstack's response on the valuation at which the latest ESOP buyback program will be executed.