LetsVenture launches its ESOPs management platform 'MyStartupEquity'

Angel investment firm LetsVenture has launched its employee stock ownership plans or ESOPs management platform 'MyStartupEquity' to digitize, manage and liquidate employee stock grants in startups.

The platform aims to bring efficiency and accountability to how companies manage their ESOPs lifecycle and will provide startup founders ways to manage their equity grants to employees allowing them to grant, exercise and ultimately liquidate the same.

The absence of standard metrics to offer ESOPs in startups has always been an issue leading to employees reluctance in joining newly launch firms.

MyStartupEquity's plug-and-play model 'dashboard', which is in the beta stage, would also allow founders as well as employees to track their ESOPs in real-time as thousands of employees accept ESOPs as compensation and often unaware of its true-value, said an Economic Times report.

This is not the first time LetsVenture has worked on a standard framework for startups. The firm has been suggesting ESOPs and liquidity policies for startup employees for a year now.

It had also opened up the discussion for a proper policy that can facilitate startup employees to get ESOPs transparently in June 2019.

However, as retention of talent has become one big problem for startups today, there are various trendsetter startups including Flipkart, Ola, Paytm, Byju’s, Freshworks, PolicyBazaar, Swiggy, Delhivery, Droom, Rivigo, among others, who have rewarded their employees with secondary transactions.

While Moglix and RazorPay have rewarded their employees with ESOP buyback two months back, Unacademy had also bought 30% of the vested stocks from its employees recently.

In October last year, the edtech Unicorn 'BYJU's had expanded its ESOPs pool by 3.5X to Rs 1,300 crore whereas payments major Paytm had added Rs 300 crore to its revised ESOP plan.