Quasar has been kind to share some of the success stories on ESOPs – these employees made about 1 crore each when WPP acquired a majority stake in Quasar. Thanks to Quasar for sharing the same.
 Deven Dharamdasani Business Director Age 29 Joined Oct-2004 |
 Gopikaa Davar Associate Director Age 26 Joined Jun-2002 |
 Manish Sinha VP – Projects Age 35 Joined Dec-2005 |
 Piyush Rathi Business Director Age 32 Joined Feb-2006 |
 Richa Burman Creative Director Age 31 Joined Mar-1999 |
 Sandeep Singh Business Director Age 26 Joined Jun-2005 |
 Vijay Singh Director Finance Age 32 Joined Apr-2000 |
Congratulations to all of the above. Hopefully, this will trigger other people to come out with their success stories!
Latest posts by Alok Mittal (see all)
- Promoters or Entrepreneurs – A choice for Private Equity players - August 3, 2019
- Startup Marathon Mindset - March 25, 2019
- What’s your Customer Culture? - March 4, 2019
Without ESOP’s they would have made average salary of INR 12-15L per year according to experience and media industry standard.
Siddharth
Not hard to guess what must have gone into the ESOP crores that got made. Remember to appreciate the pioneering idea of Quasar Media, brilliant execution by team members and the good fortune of being visible to Lord Martin Sorrel (of WPP)who acquired 75% stake.
Brilliant.
Interesting post Alok,
Deepak, important question is what are you comparing against ? How much these guys would have made in a “regular” job.
-J
Thanks Alok for this. Excellent stories and I hope there are more such stories!
When Infy acquired Progeon, they paid the progeon ESOP holders in cash (the total cost was some 58 cr. IIRC). they also had the option of converting their ESOPs to Infy ESOPs. I think some of them made money of the order of a 50 lakhs to a crore. The top honchos made more.
Also some employees made a good amount of money in the WNS IPO recently, and also when WNS acquired Marketics. Not sure of the order of money involved, but a crore or some more is what I’d imagine.
One question I would like to ask here: What’s a good exit value for an ESOP holder? Is the lure of a 1 crore exit exciting? I ask because I have no head for these numbers anymore, with tiny apartments costing upwards of a crore and living expenses tending to be 6-8 lakhs a year at least for a reasonably good life. Would the magic number be 2 crore (in today’s money)?
Or four? or am I being silly and even 50 lakhs is fantastic?
My answer: On my financial scale the number to reach, in order to not have to worry about money, is Rs. 2 crore of today’s money. I’d written about it earlier and the money I’d need is like 3.3 crores when I’m 45. That translates to about 2 cr. today.
(Darn, two years down the road since that article already, and I’m nowhere near that goal 🙂 )
Could you explain the model taken by Quasar in allotting esops to these employees, and how they were able to create such a large amount of wealth for them ? It would great to get insights into the working of this and help other startups to use this success story as a yardstick..