An overview: List of Companies Offering ESOP in India In an increasingly competitive industry, startups are going to great lengths to sweeten deals in order to hire and keep personnel. According to a VCCircle investigation, 32 Indian businesses have spent close to 3,000 crore, or $440 million, to buy back employee stock options (Esops) this year.
In 2021, the number of employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) liquidity events by startups of all stages set a new high. Throughout the year, more than three dozen Indian startups facilitated or announced ESOP repurchase plans totaling $440 million. In comparison to the previous year, ESOP buybacks have increased by more than eightfold.
BrowserStack announced a $50 million ESOP liquidity scheme, similar to Flipkart's $80.5 million ESOP buyback. Employee stock buyback schemes worth $29.5 million, $23 million, $19.3 million, $19.1 million, and $18 million have been launched by UpGrad, Udaan, CRED, ShareChat, and PhonePe, respectively. Swiggy, a food tech company, recently stated that in 2021 and 2022, it will buy stock worth $35-40 million from its employees. The List of Companies Offering ESOP in India are increasing day by day in numbers.
While the bulk of these organizations have already purchased shares held by their employees, others are in the process of doing so. Zerodha, MamaEarth, and Locus are among the projects in progress.
According to Fintrackr, a dozen companies, including Zerodha, Swiggy, Unacademy, FirstCry, Urban Company, and Meesho, purchased ESOPs valued close to $50 million from their employees. Swiggy and Zerodha, with $9 million in buybacks each, were the largest fortune makers for their staff in the recent year.
ESOP: List of Companies Offering ESOP in India Aside from ESOP buybacks, some growth-stage companies have expanded or created new ESOP (List of Companies Offering ESOP in India) pools for their employees, including Flipkart, Paytm, Zomato, Nykaa, Byju's, Zerodha, Swiggy, PharmEasy, OfBusiness, and Ola.
Flipkart has a Rs 17,000 crore [$2.26 billion] ESOP pool, while Oyo has a Rs 7,569 crore [$1 billion] pool, according to a research by Longhouse Consulting. The ESOP pools for Zomato, Paytm, and Nykaa are Rs 5,639 crore [$750 million], Rs 4,571 crore [$610 million], and Rs 4,280 crore [$570 million], respectively. Byju's, India's most valuable startup, has a Rs 3,092 crore [$412 million] ESOP pool.