Caution Rules

When the Walmart Flipkart deal was announced in May, there was talk of how it would make 3,000 odd current and former employees of Flipkart millionaires. These employees mostly from the Flipkart team of 2009 had been given stock options as part of the compensation package. Founder Binny Bansal announced 100 per cent buyback of employee stock options (ESOPs) at the employee town hall after the deal. The privileged list included Ananth Narayan, CEO of Myntra and Jabong; Mekin Maheshwari, former HR Head; and Sameer Nigam, Founder and CEO of PhonePe, the payment arm of Flipkart.

However, the real rags to riches story was that of Ambur Iyyapa, the first employee of Flipkart. Iyyapa, who had joined as a logistics manager (currently, Associate Director, Customer Experience Management) at Rs8,000 a month was also offered ESOPs.