Exclusive: IPO-Bound Ola Allots 38,750 Equity Shares To Its Staff

IPO-bound cab-hailing unicorn Ola has allotted equity shares worth INR 52 Cr upon ESOP conversion to over 99 former and current employees. 

According to Ola’s regulatory filings, the startup is allotting a total of 38,750 equity shares upon ESOP conversion to its ex-employees.

For finding the worth of the equity shares, Inc42 has taken the fair value of each equity share as INR 13,521, based on Ola’s earlier valuation report. 

Ola is allotting: 

• Around INR 5.8 Cr of equity shares to its former CFO Harish Abhichandani. 
• Around 3,155  equity shares worth INR 4.2 Cr upon ESOP conversion to Ishan Gupta, founder of Q-in-1, an edtech startup and former Ola’s senior director of EV. 
• Joy Banderkar – the group president of news aggregator Inshorts and founding partner of Udaan has been allotted 3,698 equity shares worth INR 5 Cr. As per his Linkedin profile, between 2015 and 2018, he was the corporate president of new initiatives, Ola. 

It was interesting to note that most of the employees who were allotted equity shares joined Ola between 2015-2018 and left around 2017-2018. 

The development also comes a couple of days after the startup allotted around 67,758 worth INR 91 Cr to its former four executives –  Suvonil Chatterjee, Pranay Jivrajka, Pallav Singh, and Nimish Joshi. 

In July, the startup had announced that it will be expanding its ESOP pool to INR 3,000 Cr and will give employees an additional INR 400 Cr in stocks in its run-up to public listing. 

The development comes just a day after the news of Ola’s plan to raise $500 Mn in a Term Loan B (TLB) deal made headlines. 

Moody’s Investors Service has assigned a B3 rating to the company’s proposed senior secured term loan. Ola’s wholly-owned subsidiaries — Ola Netherlands B.V. and Ola USA Inc. are the borrowers, it said in a rating note, adding that the loan is guaranteed by Ola and its subsidiaries engaged in ride-hailing services.

In its note, Moody’s said: “The company is currently in the midst of completing a pre-IPO funding round to raise equity from new and existing investors, and also targets to complete a public listing by the first half of 2022. However, the execution of its plans is subject to market conditions and as such remains uncertain.”

Ola is the third Indian startup to explore the TLB route for financing. Earlier, IPO-bound OYO picked up $660 Mn and edtech giant BYJU’s bagged $1.2 Bn in the TLB deal. 

In August, Bhavish Aggarwal, the founder of Ola in an interview had shared the company’s plan for IPO. He said that the company plans to offer shares of both Ola and Ola Electric on the stock exchanges.