Online food delivery aggregator Swiggy on Thursday said that it will buy back shares up to $23 million issued under its employee stock option plan (Esop).
“Rewarding employees by creating wealth opportunities is one of our priorities at Swiggy. We are happy to see the wealth created for employees from the recent ESOP liquidity event,” said Girish Menon, head of human resources at Swiggy, in a statement.
This is part of Swiggy's two-year Esop liquidity program worth $35-40 million that was rolled out in October last year. The next round of ESOP liquidity under this program will be held in July next year.
Swiggy also launched a new program - Build Your Own Dollar (BYOD) - to allow Swiggy employees across the company to invest in Swiggy ESOPs, the statement said.
ESOPs were earlier offered to employees above a certain grade and based on performance. The new program is now open to all permanent employees of Swiggy, it added.
Over the past year, Indian startups have been exploring creative ways to hire and retain staff, including expanding their Esop pools, as they battle each other and more established companies for talent. The startups have also been more agile in conducting ESOP buy-back programs.
Last month, Razorpay Inc., a provider of online payment and lending services to businesses, offered to buy back stock options worth up to $75 million from 650 former and existing employees.
Swiggy, operated by Bundl Technologies Pvt. Ltd, raised $700 million in a funding round led by Invesco, earlier in January. The fundraise valued Swiggy at $10.7 billion, which is double its last valuation in July, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
Last month, Swiggy agreed to acquire Times Internet-owned table booking platform Dineout in a deal valued at about $150 million, said a person familiar with the matter.
