About 350 current and ex-employees will each have a net
worth of at least 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.
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 $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.
"'For once work in a company people know about,' my
father said."
"Now he (my father) is obviously very happy. He has
just asked me to stay grounded," said Pandey, who is from Uttar Pradesh,
the country's most populous state and one of its poorest.
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, a popular tourist destination in the desert state of
Rajasthan in September, spending $5,376.
"Paytm has always been a generous paymaster. Vijay
(Sharma, the Paytm founder) has always wanted that people make money, they move
up in life," Pandey said.
Married and with two children, he says that the windfall
will allow him to work in startups where he is not entirely focused on his
income or even help him get back into academics.
"Part of the money goes into my retirement fund and I
will use a large part of it for my kids' education," he said. © Reuters
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