LocoNav Rolls Out ESOP And Equity Buyback Scheme

Delhi-based fleet management startup LocoNav has earmarked $3 Mn for its first ESOP and equity buyback scheme. Over 50 of its existing and former employees will be eligible to participate in this ESOP round and liquidate part of their vested ESOPs.

The ESOP announcement comes after the startup raised $37 Mn in Series B funding from Quiet Capital, Anthemis Group, Sequoia Capital India, Foundamental, RIT Capital Partners, Uncorrelated Ventures, Village Global, and other leading investors in July this year. 

With this move, it aims to recognise the contribution of its employees and early investors in enabling its growth in the last five years along with driving wealth creation with returns as high as 150x on its investment with this buyback scheme. 

The funds raised will add to LocoNav’s vision of democratising fleet-tech across emerging and high-growth markets along with enabling strategic acquisitions. 

Founded in 2016 by Shridhar Gupta and Vidit Jain, LocoNav started as an online marketplace to connect truck or fleet owners with their customers — BabaTrucks. Today, the startup’s SaaS platform currently offers services like LocoDrive — to help manage drivers, LocoADAS — an on-board diagnostics based solution that provides  video telematics and driver safety solutions, and LocoPay — toll and prepaid cards payments solution built around standards such as FASTag.

Jain said, “Our exponential growth in the past few years represents the relentless contribution of our employees and the trust our early investors placed in us. This ESOP and equity buyback scheme is our way of showing gratitude, empowering them with wealth creation, and enabling collective ownership as the business scales across markets.”

LocoNav is currently spread across 25 countries and claims to be used by over half a million commercial vehicle fleet owners. 

LocoNav currently shares the global market with other fleet management platforms like Verizon-owned Fleetmatics, Swiss startup Avrios, San Francisco-based Samsara, among others. In the Indian market, it competes with FleetX, GoBOLT, among several others.   

The startup’s SaaS offerings leverages data insights to India’s fleet management industry and deeply embeds in how fleet owners and operators run their business. Its AI-based technology enhances the fleet performance with customised recommendations, which enables better decision-making including operational efficiencies, cost-savings, and driver and vehicle safety.