Meesho Announces $5.5 Mn ESOP Buyback After 2X Growth In Valuation

Indian social commerce unicorn Meesho has announced a $5.5 Mn employee stock ownership liquidity program for all eligible current and former employees with vested stocks, making this the startup’s second liquidity program this year. 

In September, Meesho raised $570 Mn in Series F funding from Fidelity Management And Research Company, B Capital Group, Prosus Ventures, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Facebook. The company’s valuation doubled to $4.9 Bn. 

Founded in 2015 by Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, Meesho is an online reseller network for individuals and SMEs who sell products through social channels including WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram. In the last six months, the startup saw a 2.8x growth in monthly transacting users and a 2.5x rise in monthly orders. 

“Our repeated and periodic buybacks ensure our employees continue to grow with us. The MeeSOP program takes this commitment further, breaking hierarchies to make every employee an owner, and providing more avenues for wealth creation and tax savings,” said Vidit Aatrey, founder and CEO of Meesho. “As we hire across the board and scale our tech and product talent by 2.5X, ESOPs will give employees high ownership,”.

ESOPs are becoming an incredibly popular tool among startups looking to hire and keep the best talent. Earlier this month, IPO-bound ecommerce platform Snapdeal increased its ESOP pool by 151% from 1,98,890 to 5,00,000 options.

Earlier this year, Ola, another IPO-bound unicorn, expanded its ESOP pool to INR 3000 Cr, also allocated an additional INR 400 Cr worth of stocks to reward its ‘high-impact’ employees. Other startups that have introduced ESOP buyback programmes this year include CRED, Razorpay, Zetwerk, Browserstack, Pharmeasy among others.

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