Sandeep Jethwani authors The Millionaire Employee, India's First Insider's Guide to Creating ESOP Wealth
ESOPs have become one of India's largest wealth creation engines. Employee stock option wealth in the country now totals ₹14.2 lakh crore, roughly 2.5 times the size of the entire PMS industry. In 2024, HDFC Bank employees alone exercised over ₹5,200 crore in stock options, more than all Series B+ startups combined liquidated that year. The Flipkart acquisition minted over three thousand crorepatis, many of whom went on to build companies now worth a combined $25 billion.
Despite the growing adoption of
ESOPs in India, there is no definitive playbook on creating life-changing
wealth through them. Employees piece together answers from blog posts, LinkedIn
threads and Reddit forums, and when those fall short, they turn to awkward
calls with seniors who have lived through a liquidity event. The knowledge gap
is measurable: in a Dezerv survey, 80% of ESOP holders with over ₹1 crore in equity could not correctly calculate their
vesting, and only 20% knew that the grant letter, not the offer letter, governs
their rights.
The Millionaire Employee is written to close that gap. Jethwani spent 13 years at IIFL Wealth,
where the ESOPs he barely read in his 2008 offer letter eventually became the
financial security and capital to co-found Dezerv. He has since sat on the
other side of the table, designing ESOP programs and running buybacks for his
own team. The book distills both perspectives.
"I have had the privilege of a
front-row seat to India's ESOP-led wealth creation story," said Sandeep Jethwani, author and co-founder of
Dezerv. "When my previous company listed and paper wealth turned into
real wealth, it was a life-changing moment. It let me pay off my home loan, and
more importantly, it gave me the capital to turn entrepreneur and co-found
Dezerv with Sahil and Vaibhav, who were themselves beneficiaries of the same
ESOP program. Today at Dezerv, we serve hundreds of wealth creators who built
their fortunes through ESOPs. It is endearing to hear their stories, and
disheartening to see the outcomes of some of their ESOP decisions. I knew there
was a better way. This book compiles everything I have learned into a single,
comprehensive resource that answers the questions that matter most, so ESOP
holders never leave meaningful money on the table."
The book carries advance praise from
some of the most influential voices in Indian business and technology.
"This book is a timely and
pragmatic guide for professionals to understand ESOPs and participate
meaningfully in the value they build," said Nandan
Nilekani, Co-founder and Chairman, Infosys, and Founding Chairman, UIDAI.
"More Indian startups are
getting listed. ESOPs are becoming real wealth. This book entails real insights
on building wealth by working for the best," said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder, Paytm.
Across ten chapters, the book walks
readers through the full ESOP lifecycle: understanding a grant, the exercise
decision, navigating liquidity events, taxation and its hidden costs, timing,
decoding an ESOP offer before accepting a job, and managing wealth after a
windfall. A bonus chapter offers founders a framework for designing
employee-first ESOP programs.
The book is written for startup
operators, senior professionals at listed companies with equity compensation,
founders structuring ESOP pools, and anyone curious about how wealth is being
created in India's new economy. It carries a foreword by Prashanth Prakash,
Padma Shri | Founding Partner, Accel India, and was read pre-publication by
Nandan Nilekani, Vijay Shekhar Sharma and Kunal Bahl.
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