Awign rolls out first ESOP buyback program

On-demand work fulfilment platform Awign has announced its first employee stock option (ESOP) buyback programme worth Rs 4 crore.

The announcement comes on the heels of the company's $15 million Series B round led by Bertelsmann Investments India. It has raised a total of $22.3 million to date. 

According to Awign, eligible employees will be able to participate in this ESOP buyback and liquidate their part of the vested stock in the company. Former and present employees will be given the option to liquidate a portion of their stock.

Founded by Annanya Sarthak, Gurpreet Singh, and Praveen Kumar Sah in 2016, Awign helps enterprises run their businesses at scale by solving end-to-end outcome-based execution along with discovery, deployment, and payroll management.

Awign enables over 100 large enterprises with on-demand work fulfilment across nine core enterprise functions through a community of 1 million gig partners. It plans to double its employee strength by the end of 2023.

As per data compiled by Fintrackr, more than 20 startups have announced ESOP buyback, liquidity or sale worth around $200 million in the first six months of 2022 or H1 2022. Last year, the total buyback was worth around $440 million. During the first half, healthtech startup Orange Health and retail-tech startup Daalchini also announced their ESOP buyback plan.

While the frequency of ESOP buyback in the second half of 2022 has been quite low as compared to the first half, a clutch of growth and late-stage startups have either expanded or launched their new ESOP scheme this year. The list includes HomeLane, Ultraviolette, Waycool, Amagi, NoBroker, DealShare, Money View, Purplle, LEAP, Wiz Freight, Ather Energy, Ninjacart, and Ecom Express, among others.