From Friction to Flow: Scaler’s Fast Path to Simpler Equity Ops with EquityList

About Scaler

Scaler is a tech education company on a mission to bridge the gap between traditional degrees and industry readiness. It offers a structured, high-impact learning experience led by mentors and instructors from top global tech companies such as Google, Meta, Netflix, Microsoft, Amazon, and others.

The company is backed by marquee investors including Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global, Global Founders Capital, and Rocket Internet.

About Akshay Raje

Akshay Raje is the Head of People & Culture at Scaler, where he leads talent recruitment, HR operations, and employee lifecycle. With over 20 years of experience across EY, Citi, and Fab.com, he brings deep expertise in HR strategy, performance management, and people analytics. 

Since joining Scaler in late 2021, he has scaled the team by 300% to 1,800+ employees while overseeing equity awards for approximately 10% of the organization.

Key results with EquityList

• Migrated 170+ active grants in one week with zero data discrepancies
• Reduced equity admin time to ~1 hour/week
• Cut compliance report generation time from 4-5 hours to minutes with flexible date-range reporting

Background

When Akshay Raje joined Scaler as Head of People & Culture, the company was already using an equity management tool that served their ESOP management needs well. But when that platform was acquired, Scaler got auto-migrated to an enterprise-grade system they never chose.

"It was a clunky software with a very nuanced and very detailed UI, fairly like a legacy system," Akshay recalls.

For a high-growth company managing equity grants for 10% of their workforce, the new setup created unnecessary complexity rather than streamlined operations.

That's when they moved to EquityList—a platform built to match their scale and provide the accessible, human-centered experience they needed.

When enterprise software becomes the problem

Complexity without purpose

The new platform they were auto-migrated to was designed for complex, multi-geography operations with reporting requirements spanning multiple jurisdictions. For Scaler's straightforward ESOP needs, it was overkill.

"We just required a simple platform to manage our ESOP pool. All that complexity wasn't needed. It really was a wasteful UI."

The real dealbreaker: no local support

The overcomplicated interface was frustrating, but the complete lack of responsive customer service was the breaking point.

"They virtually don't have any support over here in India," says Akshay.

Even routine queries went unanswered, and for a team managing equity for a rapidly growing workforce, small issues became major roadblocks.

Finding a solution that actually delivers

The switch to EquityList came from a referral by Scaler's founders who themselves heard about it through the startup ecosystem—the kind of organic recommendation which happens when others find a solution that genuinely works.

Human-centered support

After the previous platform experience, Akshay was initially skeptical. But the demo call revealed something crucial: access to real people who could help when needed.

"The most important thing is having that leverage to reach out to somebody who is willing to hear you out and possibly make adjustments or accommodate your requests," he emphasizes.

It’s the kind of thing that sounds basic until you’ve spent months with enterprise software where even small changes or customizations feel impossible, either because support is unresponsive or the product’s just not built for agility

Migration done right

Unlike the forced migration to the previous platform, moving to EquityList was a collaborative process—and the difference was remarkable.

"EquityList has been very proactive in managing the overall migration for us. You folks have hand-held us in terms of data migration from the previous platform."

The process was straightforward: export standard reports from the previous platform, complete a simple data sheet, and let the EquityList team handle the rest. After a few rounds of data cleanup and validation, Scaler was operational within a week.

The impact: time savings that scale

These days, Akshay spends about an hour per week on equity management tasks, except during year-end reporting periods. A significant time-saver has been reporting functionality that’s flexible for Scaler’s ops.

"EquityList reports allow you to specify a 'From' and 'To' date for all reports, which is really helpful, because otherwise, most reporting is typically as on a specific date only," Akshay explains.

This seemingly simple feature eliminates 4-5 hours of manual spreadsheet reconciliation for each compliance report (time that adds up quickly for a growing company).

What growth-stage companies really need

Scaler's experience reflects a common challenge; outgrowing simple tools while not yet requiring enterprise-grade complexity. Their requirements are clear but crucial:

a. Intuitive employee experience:

‍"The key for any employee-facing platform is intuitive design—if I can send an email notification with a link and employees can take it from there without training, that's the baseline. When we moved to EquityList, we didn't need any specific employee onboarding, which was crucial for a team our size."

b. Admin efficiency: Generate compliance reports without spreadsheet gymnastics.

c. Responsive support: ‍When something goes wrong, there should be a human available to help fix it.

Bottom line

Scaler continues to use EquityList to manage equity for their growing team, focusing their energy on their mission to create 1M+ world-class tech professionals instead of wrestling with their equity management platform. When you're backed by marquee investors like Sequoia and Tiger Global and scaling at their pace, the best technology is the one that gets out of your way and lets you focus on what actually matters - transforming careers that change people’s lives.