Paytm IPO makes 350 current and ex-employees millionaires

Paytm's $2.5 Billion IPO Makes 350 Current, Ex-Employees Millionaires

By Thinking Boxx Team 

13 November 2021 

• About 350 current and ex-employees will each have a net worth of at least 10 million Indian rupees ($134,401.38) after Paytm's $2.5 billion IPO, a source in the company told Reuters. Many, like Pandey, will become dollar millionaires when the company lists next week.
• When Pandey joined Paytm it was primarily a small payments company with fewer than 1,000 staff. Today the firm has more than 10,000 employees and offers a range of services from banking, shopping, movie and travel ticketing to gaming.

Electronics engineer Siddharth Pandey will be among those who achieve millionaire status after the country’s biggest ever public issue, but he told Reuters that he had to overcome his father’s opposition to join the fintech firm eight years ago.

Pandey’s seven-year stint at Paytm left him with tens of thousands of shares. He declined to give details, but the shares were priced at ₹2,150 apiece on Friday.

Also read: India will dwarf other countries’ start-up ecosystems: Paytm founder

Pandey said he would be worth more than $1 million. “My dad was very demotivating. He said, ‘What is this Paytime?,’” Pandey said, referring to the time he joined Paytm in 2013.

“Now he [my father] is obviously very happy. He has just asked me to stay grounded,” said Pandey, who is from Uttar Pradesh, same as the founder of the company, Vijay Shekhar Sharma.

When Pandey joined Paytm, it was primarily a small payments company with fewer than 1,000 staff.

Today the firm has more than 10,000 employees and offers a range of services from banking, shopping, movie and travel ticketing to gaming. To celebrate, Pandey says he took his father on a five-day luxury trip to Udaipur in September, spending roughly ₹4 lakh.

“Paytm has always been a generous paymaster. Vijay [Shekhar Sharma] has always wanted that people make money, they move up in life,” Pandey said.

Those rewards are huge in a country where the per capita income is below $2,000. Pandey, now 39, is no longer with the company and is working at another start-up that he declined to identify. But he says his seven-year stint at Paytm left him with tens of thousands of shares.

He declined to give details, but the shares were priced at 2,150 rupees ($28.9) apiece on Friday. Pandey said he would be worth more than $1 million.

"My dad was very demotivating. He said, 'What is this Paytime?!'," Pandey told Reuters, referring to the time he joined Paytm in 2013.