ESOPDhan to ease owning stock by high-growth startup employees

Mumbai, Jan 11 (IANS) Financial services firm ESOPDhan on Wednesday announced its lending offerings to employees of high-growth companies to exercise vested employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs).

Set up by veteran investors Shravan Shroff and Nitin Agarwal, the firm seeks to ease the acquisition of stock options by employees of high-growth SaaS startups.

ESOPDhan said that it has already funded India-based employees of two US-based high-growth tech companies, and discussions are underway with two-three more India based unicorns.

"Our experience with startup teams over the years threw up many concerns of employees rewarded with ESOPs," Shravan Shroff, co-founder of ESOPDhan, told IANS.

"These ranged from 'How to get funds to subscribe for ESOPs and pay the exercise cost and perquisite tax' to 'How not to lose opportunities to create wealth', and 'How to get quick cash while retaining their stocks'," he added.

The RBI-registered NBFC firm solves the cash flow mismatch problem that employees face while converting their ESOPs into equity upon vesting and ensuring that taxation is optimised, thus maximising wealth creation.

"ESOPDhan aspires to be the funding partner of choice in the world of ESOPs by devising added features like 'No EMIs' and arepayment upon liquidity events'," said Shroff.

Industry estimates the value of vested ESOPs by employees of Indian unicorns till date to be more than $10 billion.

The value of vested ESOPS is expected to grow at a fast rate in the coming years.

ESOPDhan said it will work with identified late-stage high growth companies with a growing customer base.