Ahead of its planned public listing, One97 Communications Ltd, which runs digital payments firm Paytm, has allotted shares to 166 former and current employees as per the company’s filings as informed by the ministry of corporate affairs.
Share Allotment To Employees
Further, the filings show that more than 1.01 million shares have been allotted to these individuals.
The list has names like Paytm’s president Amit Nayyar who was heading the financial services division at the Noida-based startup.
Prior to this, Nayyar resigned in June this year and is currently serving his notice period.
He has been allotted 116,000 shares at an exercise price of Rs 10.5 lakh.
So far, Paytm had a total paid-up share capital of 606,941,722 shares at a face value of Rs 1 each, as per the company’s draft red herring prospectus.
Interestingly, the allotment of share comes at a time when Paytm is planning to alter the One 97 Employee Stock Option Scheme 2019 by more than doubling the existing ESOP pool from 24,094,280 equity options to 61,094,280 equity options at a face value of Rs 1 each.
The firm is expecting to seek shareholder approval on the changes to its ESOP pool at an extraordinary general meeting which is already scheduled for 2 September.
According to the sources, “At present, there would be roughly 1,000 employees at Paytm who have vested ESOPs in the company with approximately 14 million options vested,”.
Paytm In Talks With Lenders
In an earlier development, Paytm was also in talks with five lenders to help employees borrow money to exercise their stock options before the public listing.
Basically, the digital payment firm wanted to help employees pay for buying their vested options and make tax payments if required, and was in talks with IIFL, ICICI Securities, and Edelweiss Capital.
Towards this, Paytm is expected to facilitate a loan size of around Rs 100 crore.
This is expected to help 300-500 employees who hold stock options.
At present, Paytm is awaiting approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India for its draft prospectus.
The firm is hoping to list on the Indian exchanges by November.
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