The rationale behind the exercise was to convert employee ownership into meaningful outcomes while investing aggressively in its platform and customers, CEO Abhinav Shashank said
Founded in 2014 by Shashank, Kanav Hasija and Sandeep Gupta, Innovaccer helps healthcare organisations streamline their data to improve patient care and operational performance
The California-headquartered startup counts CommonSpirit Health, Kaiser Permanente, and Banner Health, among its key customers
Healthtech unicorn Innovaccer has completed an employee secondary buyback worth INR 600 Cr (around $75 Mn), providing liquidity to employees with vested stock options. An undisclosed number of current and ex-employees with restricted stock units (RSUs) benefitted from the ESOP buyback, the startup said.
“If people are helping build long-term value every day, they should have the opportunity to participate in that value along the way. Liquidity and secondary buybacks are simply an extension of our belief in people, not just as employees, but as long-term partners in the company’s journey,” Shashank told Inc42.
For context, an ESOP buyback is a transaction in which a company repurchases shares held by employees that originated from exercised ESOPs, providing them liquidity without issuing new shares or diluting existing shareholding pattern.
Earlier last year, Innovaccer raised its Series F funding round of $275 Mn from B Capital Group, Banner Health, Danaher Ventures LLC, Generation Investment Management, Kaiser Permanente, and M12 — in a mix of primary and secondary capital.
Back then, the startup said that it would deploy the freshly raised capital to fuel expansion, introduce new AI and cloud capabilities and scale its developer ecosystem.
Since then, Innovaccer doubled down on M&As with the acquisition of AI-enabled specialty care startup Story Health to strengthen specialty care management in September 2025 as well as Humbi AI to add actuarial and contracting copilots. In 2024, the unicorn snapped up Cured (patient experience and CRM) and Pharmacy Quality Solutions (pharmacy performance).
Last year, the company rolled out three new products —
While Innovaccer is not eyeing an IPO as of now, several other new-age tech companies offered liquidity to their employees in 2025, as the public listing wave took over the startup ecosystem.
As per Inc42 data, 12 Indian startups — including PhonePe, Deserv, Flipkart, Univest, Darwinbox, among others, conducted ESOP buybacks, helping more than 9,200 employees unlock wealth worth over INR 1,409 Cr ($158 Mn) in 2025. However, the overall ESOP buyback deals almost halved YoY from 23 startups rolling out ESOP buyback programmes back in 2024.
Curated by Shiv Shakti Mishra
