Jitendra Gupta’s Neobank Jupiter Rolls Out $4 Mn ESOP Buyback

Mumbai and Bengaluru-based neobank Jupiter has facilitated Employee Stock Options (ESOPs) for several of its employees across the company. The stock options, obtained from both present and past employees, have amounted to $4 Mn in liquidity transactions.

This comes within two months after the startup raised $87 Mn in Series C funding led by Tiger Global, while QED Investors, Sequoia India and Matrix Partners also participated in the fundraising. These transactions have benefitted 21 former and present employees, according to Jupiter.

Jitendra Gupta, founder and CEO at Jupiter, told Inc42, “ESOPs instil a true feeling of ownership amongst individuals and are the key to creating long-lasting, generational wealth.”

“We believe that ESOPs are a real tool for value creation for team members and help them create wealth in the long term,” he added.

It said, its banking platform is powered by Federal Bank, and on the app, users can create a bank account and use Jupiter’s app as any banking app. Jupiter has partnered with Federal Bank and Visa to issue zero-balance savings accounts and debit cards.

Founded in 2019, Jupiter offers a 100% digital savings bank account with in-built money management features including real-time spend insights, tracking liquid assets across bank accounts, personalised savings goals, and sending/receiving funds via UPI.

The neobank said it offers the savings account feature in association with Federal Bank and Axis Bank. The platform has onboarded close to 800,000 users since its founding.

Further, the startup in a statement shared that it plans to roll out new products across categories over the course of 2022.

 Going by the fundraising trends, it seems, this year, neobank startups have been raising bigger cheques. Earlier this year, Open, a neobank eyeing a spot in the pantheon of India’s unicorns, raised $100 Mn from SBI Investment, Temasek, Tiger Global and Google. 

In November 2021, another neobank startup Fi bagged $50 Mn from Falcon Edge and B Capital at a valuation of $315 Mn.

The fintech startups ecosystem in India is one of the fastest-growing in the larger startup ecosystem in the country. India recorded four of the top 10 fintech deals in the Asia-Pacific region in 2021, shining again on the global stage.

In 2021, the country’s fintech startups raised around $8 Bn across 280 funding deals, a record high in both cases. The average investment ticket size stood at $33 Mn.

And the Indian fintech sector is looking at a $1.3 Tn market opportunity by 2025.

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