Fintech giant Razorpay grants ESOPs worth Rs 1 lakh to all current employees

Razorpay, a Bengaluru-based full-stack payments and banking platform, has announced that it has extended employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) worth Rs 1 lakh to all its current employees.

The move marks RazorPay's 10th anniversary and underscores its employee-first philosophy, which has played a key role in the company's success and rapid growth since its founding in 2014.

A decade of growth and innovation

Founded by Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar in 2014, Razorpay started with the goal of simplifying online payments for businesses.

Over the past decade, the fintech giant has grown exponentially, serving more than 300 million end consumers and processing an annualized total payment volume (TPV) of $180 billion. It has also secured more than $800 million in funding across multiple rounds, reaching a valuation of approximately $7.5 billion.

“Back in 2014, when we started Razorpay, we didn’t think of it as a startup—it was a massive customer problem we wanted to fix,” said Mathur.

“That’s been the common denominator till now. I believe our customer-centric vision is what has transformed us from a simple idea of making payments seamless into a platform that is empowering the dreams of millions of businesses across India today.”

Employee-first philosophy

Razorpay’s move to extend ESOPs worth Rs 1 lakh to every current employee is unusual in India’s startup ecosystem, where ESOPs are often reserved for senior team members or select high performers. According to the company, many of its employees will receive ESOPs for the first time.

“While we’re proud and humbled by how far we’ve come, this 10-year milestone is only the beginning of a much larger journey that lies ahead,” Mathur said.

“The ESOP initiative is our way of ensuring every teammate shares in the success as we continue to innovate, simplify money movement, and create even greater value for businesses in India and beyond.”

Over the years, Razorpay has run multiple ESOP buyback programs. In 2018, 140 employees were able to liquidate their vested shares, and in 2022, a $75 million buyback benefited 650 current and former employees.

Looking back over the past 10 years, Shashank Kumar, Co-founder & MD of Razorpay, said, “It’s been an incredible and humbling decade of innovation, growth, and transformation for us, and I would give due credit to our team for inculcating the right mindset from the start. Early on, Harshil & I were shaped by our middle-class upbringing, where we learned to prioritize doing the right thing rather than taking shortcuts."

"Razorpay was never about short-term wins but about building something meaningful over the long term. It reinforced a simple principle: do what adds value to our customers and avoid distractions like chasing trends or short-term optimizations for valuation. This mindset became the foundation of our culture—and it is this culture of long-term thinking and value creation that drives us to recognize and reward our team’s hard work through initiatives like granting ESOPs to all employees. The next chapter promises even more, and I look forward to building it together with our Razors," Kumar added.

Future Plans

Razorpay has introduced several new initiatives in recent months, including the Razorpay Venture Investment Program, which aims to support and empower the next generation of B2B innovators.

The company reported a 24% year-on-year revenue increase for its Payment Gateway business in fiscal year 2024, reaching Rs 2,068 crore. Profit after tax also surged nearly fivefold in the same period, highlighting Razorpay’s strong financial performance.