Fintech unicorn Razorpay has announced its latest secondary share sale. And at $75 million, this sec share sale is the largest one on Razorpay’s part since its inception back in 2014. It also comes after the previous ESOP buyback of $10 million, back in March 2021.
Led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and including participation from New York-headquartered Moore Strategic Ventures, the round is open to 650 of Razorpay’s current and former employees across roles including software engineers, product managers, customer experience agents, sales, and administrative staff. They will be able to sell up to 30% of their vested ESOP shares, which will be bought back at a 14% discount to the valuation of Razorpay in December 2021 – $7.5 billion.
Both Lightspeed Venture Partners and Moore Strategic Ventures will be joining Razorpay as investors, while its early angel investors will divest their stakes in the unicorn.
The latest (and largest) ESOP buyback of Razorpay is the second-largest in the Indian startup ecosystem, ranking after Flipkart’s ₹600 crore buyback back in July 2021. It will conclude over the next few weeks.
According to Razorpay co-founder and CEO Harshil Mathur, the current ESOP sale will not have an impact on the valuation of the fintech unicorn. As mentioned earlier, it was valued at $7.5 billion in December 2021 after a fresh $375 million funding round.
“There is no change in the valuation of the company as part of the transaction. The company is not even going to be a party to the transaction. These are investors who wanted to put money into the company. But we are very well capitalized so we decided to use this opportunity to create wealth for our employees,” Mathur said.
This comes after the unicorn, which recently went international with the acquisition of Curlec, clocked a strong growth over the past year (growth of 300%) and aims to achieve $90 billion in TPV (Total Payment Volume) by the end of the year. Additionally, it expects to grow its merchant base from eight million to 10 million by the end of the year.
