How Rs 60,000 reward jumped to Rs 1 crore and pumped this entrepreneur's bank balance

Helping people selflessly can be great for one’s karma but sometimes it can do wonders for one’s bank balance too. That’s exactly what happened to an entrepreneur who was rewarded for his selflessness – the reward pumped his bank balance by a crore!

Sharing the anecdote on LinkedIn, Nimish Adani, founder of Housenama, that is in the business of designing name plates, said that he helped someone and got Rs 1 crore in return. He was part of the BharatMatrimony.com team but was offered the role of the initial founding member at a start-up. He was also asked to help the start-up recruit team members, which Adani did. He said that he was offered compensation for his help but he refused. Nevertheless, the start-up CEO sent him a share certificate worth Rs 60,000.

Cut to 2017, when he was reminded of the shares by a friend now that the start-up was listed. Adani said he looked for the certificate but could not find it. His office boy gradually found the certificate, after which he got the shares dematerialised.

But, to his surprise, the shares were then worth Rs 1 crore.

Adani said that the company had undertaken a stock split, and that he held 58,000 shares in the company. Following the stock split, the face value changed. “I know this story seems ridiculously unreal. I'd be equally cynical if I was reading this post. By the time I dematerialised, the stock had split. FV changed from 10 to 1 and I held 58k shares that I sold at 170+ in 2017-18,” he said in a comment.

“So, the lesson here is - Always help someone without expecting anything in return. The universe has a funny way of conspiring to make it count,” he said. He also shared a cheeky tip in the end, and said that if any startup founder wants to help, you insist the reward be in shares.

The start-up that buoyed Nimish Adani’s bank balance was Infibeam, founded by Vishal Mehta.

The company, since its inception, has been through a range of transformations. Infibeam was launched as an e-commerce marketplace. It gradually launched a Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) marketplace software platform Buildabazaar to build online stores. It was listed on BSE and NSE in 2016. It also received a contract from the government to manage its online procurement portal, Government e-Marketplace (GeM).

It was rebranded as Infibeam Avenues in 2018. In 2019, it acquired Cardpay Technologies to offer credit cards to corporate. It is currently a leading fintech company.

Infibeam posted a growth of 137 per cent on year in its profit after tax at Rs 23 crore in the end of the June quarter as against a PAT of Rs 10 crore the previous year.

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