Ninjacart conducts Rs 100-crore ESOP buyback for current, former employees

Bengaluru: Ninjacart, a supply chain startup for fresh produce, has executed an ESOP buyback worth Rs 100 crore, underscoring a growing trend among Indian startups to enrich their employees and retain them in a highly competitive hiring environment.

Both current and former employees of the Bengaluru-based firm are eligible for the ESOP buyback programme, which also gives them the option to entirely sell their vested employee stock ownership plans. This is the company’s second ESOP buyback. The first one was conducted in 2019.

An ESOP is an employee benefit plan which gives a company’s staff ownership of the firm through equity shares which they can sell at certain times.

Ninjacart’s ESOP buyback announcement comes days after Flipkart and Walmart
invested $145 million in the company. The Indian ecommerce firm recently
effected its own ESOP buyback worth Rs 17,000 crore—the biggest in India’s startup ecosystem.

It has been a record year for ESOP buybacks across Indian startups. Nearly 40 Indian startups
had bought back Rs 3,200 crore worth of shares from July till November last year, from employees who had been given stock options, according to data compiled for ET by ESOP Direct.

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