Flipkart staff cash in on $700 million esop

BENGALURU: It was a Friday cheer for Flipkart employees after they cashed in on a $700-million employee stock ownership plan (esop) buyback. About 20,000 employees are expected to be eligible for the payout, sources said. Walmart-backed Flipkart had acquired PhonePe in 2016. In 2020, Flipkart hived off PhonePe into a separate entity.

“The board of directors of Flipkart announced the complete separation of the PhonePe business by sellingoff its entire shareholding in December 2022. . . the board of directors had decided to pay $43. 7 as compensation for each esop (vested options for eligible current and formerstakeholders and unvested options only for eligible current stakeholders) as of the record date of December 23, 2022,” email from Flipkart Group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy said. He said employees will be notified about the individual payouts by next week.

Last year, Flipkart announced an ownership separation with PhonePe and told its employees it would paythose with employee stock options a one-time discretionary amount. Founded in December 2015, PhonePe has over 400 million registered users, meaning that more than o ne in four Indians are on PhonePe. The company has also digitised over 35 million offline merchants spread across tier 2, 3, and 4 cities and beyond, covering 99% pin codes of the country.
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