Swiggy to reward its employees with ESOP liquidity program

Foodtech major Swiggy is going to reward its employees with a new ESOP liquidity program that will see participation from the family offices of leading industrial houses in India and a few individuals. This is the second such liquidity program by Swiggy. In June 2018, the Bengaluru-based firm had concluded a similar program.

“As the food delivery business makes a steady recovery and the future continues to look promising, we want to reward our team that has worked relentlessly over the last many months with a meaningful wealth creation opportunity through an ESOP liquidity program,” said Girish Menon, vice president of HR at Swiggy in an email.

“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,” Menon added.

While the company hasn’t disclosed the size of the transaction, several media reports estimated it at around $7-9 million.

The development has come at a time when the online food delivery players are expecting to come up to their pre-Covid levels. Recently, Swiggy said that its food delivery business has recovered to around 80-85% of pre-Covid-19 levels in terms of order value. According to Swiggy, it had delivered over 100 million orders since the start of the lockdown in March till the first week of October. 

In comparison, Swiggy’s rival Zomato, which also witnessed ESOP buyback worth $30 million in 2020, claimed to have delivered 92 million orders since the country went into lockdown till October 12. The Deepinder Goyal-led firm is also planning to undertake another such exercise worth $50-60 million to give its current employees an exit before its public listing. 

Swiggy will join the likes of Zerodha, Urban Company and Unacademy which also went for ESOP buyback or liquidation program to reward their former as well as existing employees.