Exclusive: Urban Company allots ESOPs worth Rs 42 Cr to its employees

Home service marketplace Urban Company has initiated fresh allotment of equity shares under its employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) to 181 employees including a clutch of former and current top-level executives of the Gurugram-based company.

The company has allotted 1,543 equity shares under its ESOP scheme to 181 employees at an exercise price of Re 1 per share, regulatory filings show. The full allotment is worth around Rs 42-46 crore.

The fresh allotment has come after six months of the $255 million funding round raised by Urban Company at around $2.1 billion valuation. The company is among 41 startups that turned unicorn this year and only one from the home service marketplace segment.

Following this, Sripad Panyam, former vice president of product management at Urban Company is the biggest beneficiary of the latest ESOP allotment. He received equity shares worth Rs 6 crore. Panyam left Urban Company in May last year and currently he is the co-founder of Tapa Technologies Pvt Ltd.

Anubhav Singh, founding member and N Pugazhenthy, former Regional General Manager (AVP) are the two second-largest beneficiaries receiving equity shares worth Rs 2.15 crore each. Singh and Pugazhenthy also left Urban Company and are currently serving as co-founder of WMall and Senior Director at Cashfree, respectively.

Other notable benefactors on the list are Kanav Arora, SVP engineering and Dheeraj Sidana, VP of engineering at Urban Company.

Since its inception, Urban Company has done three ESOP buyback programs. The first ESOP sale event was completed in June 2017 followed by another one in December 2018. In August 2020, it had announced its employee stock sale program worth $5 million or Rs 37.5 crore in which the company’s employees were given the option to liquidate their vested ESOPs which were purchased by Vy Capital through a secondary transaction. 

Earlier this year, Urban Company had created additional equity shares under its ESOP pool. As per Fintrackr’s estimates, the new addition was worth Rs 129.03 crore.

The Abhiraj Singh Bhal-led company had also announced an open-source ESOP framework in collaboration with MyStartupEquity, a cap table and ESOP management product by LetsVenture. The framework aims to help startups as well as private companies with better structure terms and conditions and in building their ESOP policy.