Urban Company has $5 million ESOPs up for sale as its long time backer Vy Capital is set to buy more stake

• Investment firm Vy Capital will be buying back the shares from the employees.
• This is Urban Company’s third and largest ESOP sale plan worth $5 million.
• During this sale, over 180 employees will be eligible to sell their shares.

Home services startup Urban Company has announced its third ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) sale for $5 million, as it's set to raise money from Vy Capital. The investment firm will be buying the stocks as a secondary transaction.

Vy Capital has earlier placed bets on Indian startups like Zomato, NoBroker, and has been an investor in Urban Company for over three years now.

According to the company’s statement, over 180 employees are eligible to sell their shares.

Year	Value for each share	Employees eligible to sell
June 2017	₹24,500	25
Dec 2018	₹61,864	100
Aug 2020	₹110,000	180

So far, the company’s stocks have been awarded to 670 employees, including 450 current employees.

“Urban Company's ESOP programme has very employee-friendly terms, such as an exercise price of Re. 1, accelerated vesting, a flat 4-year vesting schedule (25% each year), and an infinite hold period to exercise the ESOPs after the employee leaves the company. Approximately 450 employees or 40% of the company's full-time staff have ESOPs, from customer service representatives to our SVPs.”, said Abhiraj Singh Bhal, Co-founder of Urban Company.

Recently, stock-broking firm Zerodha too had announced that from the ESOP pool of ₹200 crore, their employees will be permitted to sell 5-50% of the 33% of the shares the employees hold. About 800 employees were eligible to benefit from the buyback plan.


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