Singapore’s Qapita acquires India-based ESOP Direct

Singapore-headquartered equity management firm Qapita announced that it has completed the 100% acquisition of India-based ESOP Direct in a full cash transaction.

This will see Qapita secure full ownership of ESOP Direct’s operating entities from its shareholders, per the announcement.

With this acquisition, Qapita will become a market leader in this region catering to both listed and unlisted clients, expanding its customer base in India and Southeast Asia to more than 1,200 customers.

The combined entity will also manage more than $12 billion in Employee Stock Option Plans (ESOPs), managing more than 130,000 employee owners.

With this acquisition, Qapita will now expand its product and engineering team to more than 100 professionals while further cementing its presence in major start-up hubs in India such as Bangalore, Hyderabad, New Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, and Chennai, in addition to its Southeast Asian presence in Singapore and Jakarta, while doubling its employees from 100 to more than 220.

“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,” said Ravi Ravulaparthi, CEO & co-founder of Qapita.

Qapita expects the value of private securities in this region to exceed $1-1.5 trillion with the presence of 200 to 250 unicorns within the next few years, and that scalable digital solutions will be critical for such an ecosystem to thrive.

ESOP Direct is a pioneer in end-to-end solutions in the equity compensation domain in the Indian market. Its service offerings encompass the entire lifecycle of Employee Share Plans from plan conceptualisation, design, documentation, on-going plan administration, employee support, compliance, valuation, and reporting.

For two decades, ESOP Direct has designed over 1,000 plans and it manages over 500 plans on its proprietary platform, My ESOPs. As a thought leader, ESOP Direct has also been involved in policy making initiatives for the Indian regulators and has introduced several innovative solutions within this domain.