FirstCry CEO Supam Maheshwari's monthly remuneration drops 49% to Rs 8.6 cr

Supam Maheshwari, Firstcry MD and CEO

IPO-bound unicorn FirstCry’s founder and chief executive officer saw his remuneration per month plunge 49 percent to Rs 8.6 crore in the first three quarters of FY24, compared to Rs 16.7 crore a year before.

His total remuneration was Rs 77.5 crore in the first three quarters of FY24, whereas it was Rs 200.7 crore for entire FY23, according to the company’s revised draft red herring prospectus filed with the markets regulator.

These remuneration numbers include short-term employment benefits, share-based payments accrual and exclude provisions for gratuity, compensated absences and other long-term employment benefits.

Moneycontrol reported earlier that Maheshwari offloaded 6.2 million shares in the company in the 10 days prior to filing for an initial public offer in December. The company has filed its DRHP yet again this week as the regulator sought additional information to be presented in the document.

At Rs 487.44 each, the highest price at which a secondary share sale was executed in December, Maheshwari's offloaded shareholding would be worth more than Rs 300 crore. The FirstCry chief executive officer has also listed himself as a selling shareholder in the public issue.

While the FirstCry boss held 35,097,831 shares (7.46 percent stake) in the company till 10 days prior to filing of the draft papers, his holding had reduced to 28,893,347 shares (5.95 percent stake) on the date of filing the application.

The revised IPO document also shows that the second-highest compensated among KMPs (key managerial personnel) in FirstCry is co-founder and chief of staff Sanket Hattimattur whose total remuneration for the first three quarters of FY24 was Rs 8.3 crore, while it was Rs 18.5 crore for the entirety of the preceding financial year.

Group chief financial officer Gautam Sharma is the third in the remuneration leaderboard. His total compensation was Rs 1.6 crore in the first three quarters of FY24 and Rs 4.8 crore in FY23.

According to the revised DRHP, FirstCry’s employee benefits expenses in the first nine months of FY24 was Rs 370 crore, compared to Rs 408 crore in FY23 and Rs 247 crore in FY22. Its share-based payment expenses were Rs 134 crore in the first nine months of FY24, Rs 361 crore in FY23, and Rs 92 crore in FY22.

The e-commerce unicorn generated Rs 4,814 crore of revenue in the first three quarters of FY23, while registering a net loss of Rs 278 crore during the period.

SEBI and FirstCry were engaging for over a month before the regulator finally sent back the company's filings and sought more clarity last week.

SEBI had initially sought 25 KPIs of which FirstCry provided only 5-6 in its first set of filings, sources told Moneycontrol earlier. FirstCry's KPIs include its average order value, annual transacting customers, and number of orders. Along with a more elaborate set of KPIs, SEBI also asked for an updated set of financials.

In the most recent round, wherein secondary transactions took place, FirstCry commanded a valuation of Rs 23,000 crore (around $2.8 billion). The company is however expected to price its IPO at a valuation of $3.5-3.75 billion.