An additional 40 current and former employees of Paytm have converted their ESOP grants to shares for monetising them in its upcoming Rs 16,600 crore IPO, the digital payments firm said in a regulatory filing.
This comes after shareholders of Paytm in an extraordinary general meeting on September 2 approved raising the share pool of its employees’ stock option plan (ESOP) to over 6.1 crore from 2.4 crore under the existing scheme.
The Rs 16,600 crore initial public offering (IPO) of the company is touted to be the country’s largest market debut at an expected valuation of around Rs 1.47 lakh crore.
Paytm has a total paid-up capital of Rs 607,274,082, as of September 2021.
Earlier, 166 former and current employees had converted their ESOPs to shares, taking the total to over 200 now.
Given that turning ESOPs to shares will cost employees heavily in terms of taxes and others, Paytm has proposed to help them get loans from its established lending partners.
“Paytm will facilitate loans of up to Rs 100 crore through its lending partners and will also bear the interest of these loans for six months, so that employees are able to handle their finances better and yet, become proud shareholders of the company,” a source told PTI.
According to the company’s draft red herring prospectus (DRHP), it disbursed 14 lakh loans during January-March, almost 53 times higher than the 26,000 loans disbursed during the same period of the previous year.