Meesho is the social commerce startup, enabled certain employees to sell their shares in the company in an Employee Stock Option Plan (ESOP) buyback, becoming the latest in a series of growth-stage firms which have given certain employees a windfall in cash. ‘Out of 60 people who were eligible, about 20 people exercised the option for a collective $1 million ( Rs 7 crore), where Naspers acquired the shares,’ Meesho’s co-founder and CEO Sanjeev Barnwal said to media.
In 2015 founded by IIT Delhi batchmates Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, Meesho is a platform that connects manufacturers with re-sellers, who eventually sell these products to users through social media platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook. Meesho also provides services such as payments and logistics to these re-sellers which enables ease of transactions and sales.
Out of the company’s 800 employees, about 200 hold stock options. Some ‘eligible employees believe in our growth and think it is too early to cash out’. The people who have cashed out from the buyback have been Meesho employees for one-four years, indicating that some newer employees cashed out as well.
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