Unacademy announces ESOP buyback worth Rs 25-30 Cr

India’s second edtech unicorn Unacademy has announced an ESOP buyback plan in which all vested ESOP till December 10 will be counted for the current and existing employees. The ESOP buyback will be in the range of Rs 25-30 crore.

Announcing the development to the internal team Unacademy’s co-founder and CEO, Gaurav Munjal said, “Employees with currently vested ESOP value of Rs 40 lakh and more can liquidate 25% of vested options. Employees with vested ESOP value between Rs 10 lakh to 40 lakh will be able to liquidate around Rs 10 lakh while employees with currently vested ESOPs values of less than Rs 10 lakh can liquidate 100%.”

Entrackr has seen the internal announcement by Munjal on the firm’s Slack channel.

It’s worth noting that last month, Unacademy had raised a $150 million round led by Softbank that valued the Bengaluru-based firm at around $1.4 billion. As per Fintrackr’s calculation, Unacademy’s ESOP pool now consists of 64,957 options in which each option is equivalent to one equity share and the whole ESOP pool of the company is valued north of Rs 930 crore or $127 million.

With the latest buyback plan, Unacademy will become the fifth firm in the Indian startup ecosystem to go for ESOP buyback. Earlier, Zerodha, FirstCry, MPL and Meesho have allowed their employees to liquidate their vested ESOP. While stockbroking platform Zerodha had bought Rs 60-65 crore worth ESOPs, FirstCry is allowing its employees to liquidate worth Rs 31 crore ESOP. 

Social commerce app Meesho had provided ESOP buyback worth Rs 7 crore. Soon after raising a $90 million round, fantasy gaming platform MPL had also announced ESOPs buyback worth Rs 24 crore or $3.2 million.

This year has been good for startups’ employees as many companies have expanded ESOPs pool along with fresh allotments. According to Fintrackr’s data, over a dozen companies have either allotted, expanded or introduced ESOP plans in 2020. The long list includes Paytm, Oyo, Zomato, Byju’s, Pine Labs, ShareChat, Shuttl, Fleetx and Jodo.