The Rs 18,300 crore initial public offering (IPO) of Paytm, the brand of One97 Communications, has made 350 of his current and ex-employees crorepati, report Reuters. According to the report, these employees will now have an individual’s net worth of at least Rs 1 crore.
Siddharth Pandey, an electronic engineer by occupation, has entered the club of one of the country’s first crorepati list following the country’s largest-ever public offering, according to Reuters.
In an interview with Reuters, he revealed that when he wanted to be a part of Paytm nine years ago, his father vehemently opposed his decision. Despite the fact that he left Paytm and became a part of another start-up, he was still left with tens of thousands of shares throughout his seven-year stint in the company. Pandey claimed he would be worth more than $1 million if his shares traded at 2,150 rupees ($28.9).
Pandey said to Reuters, “Paytm has always been a generous paymaster. Vijay (Sharma, the Paytm founder) has always wanted that people make money, they move up in life.”
Around 47 current employees associated with the company, disposed of their shares in the parent company recently. They wanted to exercise their employee stock options as Paytm’s valuation reached $4.8 billion last year.
The investor subscribed for the shares from November 8 to 10, which are expected to list on the BSE and NSE on November 18. The Paytm IPO has received a reasonable response from the investors as the offer was subscribed 1.89 times, as per stock exchange data. One97 communications received bids for 9.14 crore shares against 4.83 crore shares that were put on offer for sale. Most subscribers are retail buyers who oversubscribed the IPO since its opening day. Non-institutional buyers ordered 24 per cent of the shares set aside for them.
Paytm shares, on Tuesday, were trading at a premium of Rs 30 in the grey market, IPO Watch data shows. This was below the share price band that was fixed by the company, at Rs 2,080 to Rs 2,150 per equity share. The premium has seen a decline of 2.3 percent since last week.
The grey market is an unofficial platform where the buying and selling of the shares start with the announcement of the IPO price band and continues till the stock is not listed on the bourses.
Paytm aims to use the net proceeds from its fresh issue for improving the Paytm ecosystem, including through acquisition, merchants and customer retention and providing them with greater access to technology and financial services. The proceeds will also be diverted in taking new business initiatives, acquisitions and strategic partnerships and general corporate purposes.