Flipkart’s PhonePe Esop payout at $700 mn

The company declined to provide details of the sum paid out or the employees who will benefit. However, a person with knowledge of the company’s plans said the payout was estimated to be in excess of $700 million and would benefit around 24,000 past and present employees. This would make it one of the largest buybacks so far in India. Mint could not independently verify these figures. The payment was made to the employees on Friday, a Flipkart spokesperson confirmed.

According to an email sent by Flipkart Group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy to its employees, seen by Mint, the stock option was priced at $43.67 apiece.

Flipkart said in December 2022 that it will make “a one-time discretionary payout” to employees, following the separation of PhonePe from Flipkart. The buyback is also seen as a measure to realign PhonePe’s shareholding in the company as it raised around $1.5 billion of capital from existing and new investors, including its parent Walmart.

PhonePe is majority-owned by Walmart. As part of the process PhonePe became an India-domiciled company, seen as a precursor to its eventual domestic public listing.

The PhonePe Group was acquired by the Flipkart Group in 2016 and is one of India’s largest digital payments platform

Earlier this year, General Atlantic invested over a $1 billion in PhonePe, valuing the fintech at around $12 billion while in 2022, Flipkart was valued at more than $40 billion.

“As you know, the Board of Directors (BoD) of Flipkart Private Limited announced the complete separation of the PhonePe business by selling off its entire shareholding in December 2022. With this development, the BoD had decided to pay $43.67 as compensation for each ESOP (vested options for eligible current and former stakeholders and unvested options only for eligible current stakeholders) as of the record date of 23 December 2022.,” the email to Flipkart employees on Friday said.

Updated: 14 Jul 2023, 11:01 PM IST