Exclusive: Ola facilitates ESOP encashment to existing and former executives

Ride-hailing company Ola has executed an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) worth about Rs 78.6 crore or $10.5 million for its three former and one current executive.

Ola has provided ESOP encashment to Pranay Jivrajka, former chief executive officer of Ola Foods, Pallav Singh, former chief operating officer of Ola, Nimish Joshi, former Vice President and its current chief product officer, Suvonil Chatterjee.

According to the company’s regulatory filings, Jivrajka is the biggest beneficiary of the latest ESOP encashment scheme with Rs 38.17 crore followed by Singh, Chatterjee and Joshi who made encashment worth Rs 24.8 crore, Rs 8.5 crore and Rs 7.08 crore respectively.

The development came soon after the announcement of ESOP pool expansion and allocation of fresh stock by the Bhavish Agarwal-led company. In July, ola had said that it expanded its ESOP pool to Rs 3,000 crore and will allocate an additional Rs 400 crore worth of stocks to employees in the run-up to its IPO. 

Entrackr has reached out to Ola for more details. We’ll update the post in case they respond.

It’s worth noting that Ola has one of the largest ESOP pools among late-stage startups. The list includes Paytm, Byju’s and Oyo. SoftBank-backed Paytm is planning to seek approval from its shareholders to increase its ESOP pool from 2,40,94,280 equity options to 61,094,280 equity options. If approved, the value of the increased ESOP pool will be more than Rs 11,480 crore $1.5 billion.

Last year, Byju’s had expanded its ESOP pool size to over Rs 3,000 crore. Oyo’s overall ESOP pool was worth around Rs 4,300 crore as of September 2020.

Meanwhile, Ola is gearing up for a public listing in the first quarter of 2022. Ola is looking to raise $1-1.5 billion via an IPO and is expected to file the DRHP (Draft Red Herring Prospectus) in the December quarter. Entrackr had exclusively reported about the company’s potential IPO in this fiscal.