Amidst dealing pandemic, Shuttl expands its ESOP pool

Mobility startups have been facing the worst time since the outbreak of pandemic in March. While Ola and Uber barely regained 20% of their pre-Covid-19 peak volume, office commute-focused platform Shuttl has been going through a hard time as most of the corporates and startups moved to work from home policy.

To cut costs and extend the runway, Shuttl had laid off over 40 employees and slashed salaries across functions in March. Now, the company has brought some positive news for its employees with the expansion of ESOPs pool.

According to regulatory filings, Shuttl has approved the expansion of its ESOP pool with worth Rs 24.1 crore. With this, the aggregate ESOP pool will be worth around  Rs 122 crore. 

The Gurugram-based company will join the likes of Paytm, Oyo, Zerodha, Unacademy, Swiggy, Simsim which have either expanded their ESOP pool or rewarded their employees with a stock buyback program.

The extended pool has now been created in order to grant attractive numbers of ESOPs to the employees of the company, filings show. The move definitely will instil confidence among the employees, who faced cut in salaries and other compensations.

It seems that Shuttl will award the newly created ESOPs to retain employees who’re suffering from austerity measures. Of late, Shuttl has been trying to restore the service across the routes it operates in and some of the most demanding routes like Delhi to Dwarka have been operating since June. 

According to Entrackr’s sources, the company is likely to expand its operations after December when offices will start opening up. As per the information available on the company’s website, it is planning to launch in Bengaluru and looking for hiring fresh talents.

Entrackr has sent queries to Shuttl to get the idea over the expansion of ESOPs pool and resuming operations. We will update the story as and when they respond. 

Shuttl was one of the top companies among the mobility sector which faced the heat of the pandemic. Apart from lay off, the company also asked several employees to work with limited benefits.