Deepinder Goyal donates his Zomato stock options worth ₹700 crore to offer free education for delivery partners’ children and more

• Deepinder Goyal on Friday announced that he will be donating all his ESOP proceeds worth ₹700 crore to the Zomato Future Foundation.
• The foundation will cover the education of up to two children of all Zomato delivery partners who have been with the company for five years.
• It would also offer educational and livelihood support for the families of all delivery partners who meet “unfortunate circumstances” on duty.

Zomato founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Deepinder Goyal on Friday (May 6) announced that he will donate all his employee stock option plan (ESOP) proceeds worth ₹700 crore to Zomato Future Foundation, which will be used towards offering free education to the children of delivery partners, among other things.

Goyal made this announcement in an email sent to the employees of the company.

“Right before we went public, I was granted some ESOPs by our investors/ board basis my past performance. Some of these ESOPs vested last month (because there’s a minimum 1 year vesting required as per law). At the average share price over the last month, these ESOPs are worth ~$90m (~₹700 crores),” Goyal said in the letter, seen by Business Insider.

The Zomato Future Foundation will cover the education of up to two children, up to ₹50,000 per child per annum on actuals, of all Zomato delivery partners who have been with the company for more than five years. The amount will increase to ₹1,00,000 per child per annum for partners who have been associated with the company for ten years.

The company will also introduce special programs for girl children and offer prize money to girls who complete 12th grade and graduation, Goyal said in the email to Zomato employees. Besides this, the company would also offer educational and livelihood support for the families of all delivery partners who meet “unfortunate circumstances” such as accidents while on duty.

This is what Zomato’s Deepinder Goyal said in the email:

Hi team – right before we went public, I was granted some ESOPs by our investors/ board basis my past performance. Some of these ESOPs vested last month (because there’s a minimum 1 year vesting required as per law).

At the average share price over the last month, these ESOPs are worth ~$90m (~₹700 crores). Here’s my plan for these ESOPs –

I am donating all the proceeds from these ESOPs (net of taxes) towards the Zomato Future

Foundation (ZFF). The ZFF will cover -

• Education of up to two children of all Zomato Delivery Partners, up to Rs 50,000 per child per annum on actuals ( above a certain service quality benchmark ) who have been on our fleet for more than 5 years. This amount will go up to ₹1,00,000 per child per annum if the Delivery Partner completes 10 years with us.

• Service thresholds of 5/10 years will be lower for Women Delivery Partners. We will also have special programs for girl children and introduce “prize money” if a girl completes 12th grade, as well as her graduation.

• Higher education scholarships over and above these limits for children with higher performance and potential

• Educational and livelihood support for the families of all our Delivery Partners (irrespective of service tenure) who meet with unfortunate circumstances such as accidents, while on the job

This is just the start. As and when needed, we will keep expanding and re-evaluating the scope of this Foundation to benefit our ecosystem further.

Again, 100% of the proceeds of this ESOP vesting cycle are committed towards ZFF. To reap the most benefit for ZFF, and protect the interests of our shareholders, I do not intend to liquidate all these shares immediately, but over the next few years. For the first year, I will liquidate less than 10% of these ESOPs towards this fund.

ZFF is also going to be open to donations from other Zomato employees. We are also going to explore other fundraising opportunities for the ZFF. We will also set-up an independent governance board for the Zomato Future Foundation.

I hope you are as excited as me for the opportunity to give back to our society in a meaningful way. I am especially pumped for what this Foundation will do for our Delivery Partner’s children – I believe that education is the one and only thing that can give them a chance to build a life much better than their previous generations.

I also hope that some of these kids grow up to leading the charge at various businesses that we build within Zomato over time, in addition to starting new companies that change the future course of our country.

Cheers, Deepi

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