BrowserStack announces $125 million share buyback programme; says, 'We want our team to feel the same ownership'

Mumbai-headquartered BrowserStack has announced a $125 million ESOP and share buyback programme to provide liquidity to its employees and early investors, with nearly half of the proceeds earmarked for around 500 staff members and the remainder set to go to early backers led by Accel.

The buyback, which will be rolled out over the coming weeks, will see employees sell their stock options back to the company.

With this transaction, BrowserStack will have returned a cumulative $275 million to shareholders across three buyback programmes.

According to Tracxn data, founders Ritesh Arora and Nakul Aggarwal together hold about 78% of BrowserStack. Accel owns nearly 10%, while Bond Capital and Insight Partners hold about 1.3% and 0.6%, respectively. Roughly 10% of the company’s equity is allocated to its employee stock option pool.

“As we scale AI-driven innovation, we want our team to feel the same ownership and pride that Nakul and I do every single day,” Arora told ET. He added that while large ESOP pools often remain “wealth on paper”, periodic liquidity events allow employees to realise value. Over the past few years, several consumer internet and SaaS companies, including Flipkart, have concluded similar employee liquidity programmes.

BrowserStack has funded the buyback entirely from profits, rather than through secondary transactions backed by incoming investors. The enterprise SaaS company was founded in 2011 and remained bootstrapped until 2018, when it raised its first external funding of $50 million from Accel and angel investors at a $500 million valuation.

In mid-2021, it raised $200 million in a round led by Bond Capital at a $4 billion valuation, briefly making it the highest-valued Indian SaaS startup before that distinction was overtaken by Postman later the same year.

The latest buyback coincides with BrowserStack’s evolution from a software testing infrastructure provider into an end-to-end testing platform. Over the past few years, the company has expanded its product portfolio from five offerings to 21. It has also pursued inorganic growth, acquiring Requestly in May 2025 and Berlin-based bug detection and reporting platform Bird Eats Bug for $20 million in 2024.

BrowserStack expects to cross $300 million in revenue in calendar year 2026, marking double-digit growth over the previous year.

BrowserStack is domiciled in Ireland and does not publicly disclose consolidated financials. Its Indian entity reported standalone revenue of Rs 771 crore in fiscal 2025, a year-on-year increase of 13%. The bulk of the company’s revenues, however, are generated from the US and Ireland.