Singapore-based equity management company Qapita announced that it has completed the acquisition of India’s ESOP Direct via a full cash transaction.
This should see Qapita secure complete ownership of ESOP Direct’s operating entities from its existing shareholders.
With this strategic acquisition, Qapita should become one of the market leaders in this area, serving listed and unlisted clients, further expanding its client base in India and Southeast Asia to over 1,200 customers.
The combined business entity will be managing over $12 billion in Employee Stock Option Plans (ESOPs), managing over 130,000 employee owners.
With this latest acquisition, Qapita will expand its product/engineering team to over 100 workers while solidifying its presence in major start-up hubs in India like Bangalore, Hyderabad, New Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, and Chennai, in addition to its Southeast Asian presence in Singapore and Jakarta, while also doubling its workers from 100 to over 220.
Ravi Ravulaparthi, CEO & Co-Founder of Qapita, said:
“The incredible team at ESOP Direct pioneered stock compensation serving leading companies in this region. This acquisition is an important step to executing our vision of creating one unified platform for all equity matters, in our bid to build rails for the private markets. Complementing knowledge leadership with cutting edge technology will allow us to serve customers through the lifecycle, from incorporation to liquidity events, to IPOs and beyond. We look forward to enabling our customers to create more equity owners in this region and making every one of them count.”
ESOP Direct is considered to be an industry pioneer in end-to-end solutions in the equity compensation domain in the Indian market.
Its service offerings reportedly include the complete lifecycle of Employee Share Plans from plan conceptualization, design, documentation, on-going plan administration, employee support, compliance, valuation, and reporting.
Over its two decades of doing business, ESOP Direct has created more than 1,000 plans and it manages more than 500 plans on its platform, My ESOPs.
ESOP Direct has also been involved in policy making initiatives for regulators and has introduced various solutions within this domain.
Harshu Ghate, Cofounder and Managing Director of ESOP Direct said:
“The coming together of our two businesses would complement each other’s strengths. It would help our clients and employees to deliver downstream financial transaction services through a unified platform. This step is a logical progression of our current business model and in line with the global trends in this domain. Our deep domain expertise and thought leadership will now be leveraged beyond the Indian market. We will continue with our endeavor to structure pathbreaking solutions to ensure success of Employee Share Plans of our clients.”
Lakshman Kanamarlapudi, COO and Co-Founder of Qapita, stated:
“We are extremely excited about the potential that this partnership with ESOP Direct will bring. With market leadership within this region and along with our investment in technology, Qapita is well positioned to create one unified platform for all equity matters from CapTables, ESOPs, to compliance and accounting matters, ultimately leading to liquidity solutions. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank our investors for their continued support in executing our team’s vision.”