Flipkart announces $50 million Esop buyback: the biggest employee cashouts at startups so far

Employee stock ownership plans (Esops) are becoming common in India’s startup ecosystem, letting employees cash out vested stock options before an IPO or acquisition.

In recent months, Flipkart, BrowserStack, CoinDCX, Cashfree, Unacademy, Atlys and Plum have announced Esop buyback or liquidity programmes across the ecommerce, SaaS, fintech, crypto, edtech, and travel technology domains.

Flipkart


The latest announcement came this month from Walmart-owned Flipkart, which has initiated its second Esop liquidity event of the past year with a corpus of $50 million. Eligible employees can liquidate up to 5% of their vested stock options, accumulated over the past three years, at Rs 713.4 per option. The payout is scheduled for August.

The exercise follows Flipkart’s first $50 million employee stock buyback, announced last July, which was pegged to provide liquidity to 7,000-7,500 employees. The latest event is the conditional second payout Flipkart had indicated could happen if key goals were met.

Flipkart has been among India’s most consistent employee-liquidity creators. Since 2018, it has carried out at least five major Esop/share buyback or liquidity events: a $500 million buyback linked to Walmart’s acquisition in May 2018; an $80-85 million buyback during its $3.6 billion funding round in July 2021; a $700 million buyback after the PhonePe separation in July 2023; the $50 million buyback in July 2025; and the latest $50 million event. ET had reported last year that Flipkart’s Esop buybacks had already aggregated to about $1.5 billion before the latest exercise.

BrowserStack

Software testing platform BrowserStack announced a $125 million share buyback in January, offering liquidity to employees and early investors. Nearly 500 employees were set to benefit. With this, BrowserStack’s total buybacks across three programmes rose to around $275 million, making it one of the largest employee liquidity-linked transactions by an Indian-origin software startup this year.

CoinDCX

Crypto exchange CoinDCX announced an Esop buyback worth Rs 111 crore in February, its largest liquidity event so far, aimed at over 500 current and former employees. The company was last valued at $2.45 billion after Coinbase invested in it last year.

Unacademy

Edtech startup Unacademy announced a Rs 50 crore Esop buyback in February. Eight employees will receive more than Rs 1 crore each, 17 over Rs 50 lakh, and 38 over Rs 10 lakh. The programme followed a restructuring exercise and Unacademy’s earlier decision to amend and then roll back changes to its Esop window.

Cashfree

Payments company Cashfree announced an Esop buyback in January for more than 400 employees, including 175 former employees. It did not disclose the size or valuation.

Atlys

Visa processing startup Atlys announced its first Esop buyback, worth Rs 4 crore, in April, allowing employees to sell up to 25% of their vested options. This followed Atlys’ $36 million March funding round led by Susquehanna Asia VC, with participation from Elevation Capital, Long Journey Ventures, Peak XV Partners and MakeMyTrip.

Plum

Employee health benefits platform Plum announced a Rs 15 crore Esop buyback in June, covering 73 current and 126 former employees, whose options had vested as of March 31. Eligible participants can liquidate up to 25% of their vested Esops, and 17 employees are expected to receive payouts exceeding Rs 20 lakh. The buyback came about three months after Plum raised $20.5 million in a Series B round led by Peak XV Partners.