Meesho Employees Will Get Rs 37 Crore For Selling Their ESOP Shares; Facebook Has Invested In Meesho

By Shreya Ambre On Nov 11, 2020

Meesho, Backed By Facebook, Will Spend Rs 37 Crore For ESOP Buyback From Employees

After Zerodha, Unacademy, Urban Company, Zomato, Swiggy, now Meesho, a social e-commerce platform, has launched the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) buyback plans for its employees.

Read on to know more about Meesho’s ESOP…

What Does Meesho’s ESOP Buyback Plan Offer?

The Facebook-backed Meesho has launched the ESOP buyback plan worth $5 million (approx. Rs 37 crore).

This plan will allow the employees right from junior level to senior executives to vest 100% of their shares.

The current ESOP buyback plan by Meesho will be the second such initiative by the company.

The 5-year-old Meesho has posted 4 times growth in the number of entrepreneurs since the pre-COVID-19 level and has claimed that it now has over 70 lakh entrepreneurs on its platform.

Vidit Aatrey, Founder & CEO, Meesho, said, “We at Meesho believe our employees to be our assets. The journey for everyone at a young company like ours has been interesting especially by the sheer rate at which we have grown in scale and speed. This venture is driven by a sense of entrepreneurship and responsible ownership on the part of each employee of the company, hence, with this second buyback we want to acknowledge their continued efforts and reward them for their contribution in building Meesho and thereby instill confidence in our existing and potential employees.”

Indian Startups Announcing Benefits For Its Employees!

Several other companies are also launching ESOP plans as a reward for their employees.

Recently, Swiggy announced its plans of rolling out the ESOP liquidity program as a reward for its employees. “Over 40% of our employees with ESOP benefits – current and those we had to, unfortunately, part ways with earlier this year- will be eligible to exercise their stocks. Some of them will be able to liquidate their ESOPs at as much as 3x premium of the allotted price,” said Girish Menon, vice president of HR at Swiggy.

In 2020, Zomato witnessed ESOP buyback worth $30 million by delivering over 9.2 crore orders from the start of the lockdown till October 12. The food-tech major is planning on launching another such program amounting to around $50-60 million to give its current employees an exit before going public.

OYO had also granted ESOPs worth ?130 crores ($18 million) for its furloughed employees.