On-demand convenience platform Swiggy announced its fifth Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) liquidity programme on Monday, ahead of its Initial Public Offering (IPO) slated for later this year. As part of this initiative, Swiggy employees across various levels and functions will have the option to receive liquidity of up to $65 million (over Rs 540 crore) for their ESOPs.
This is the fifth liquidity event for Swiggy since 2018, and the third consecutive event after July 2022 and 2023. So far, the company has cumulatively enabled over Rs 1000 crore of ESOPs liquidity over the five events, benefitting over 3200 employees. In 2022, it initiated a $23 million ESOP liquidity programme. Again in 2023, Swiggy bought back shares worth $50 million from 2000 employees.
“Rewarding employees by unlocking wealth-creation opportunities, as Swiggy grows, has always been a key priority for us,” said Girish Menon, Head of HR at Swiggy. "Employees owning shares of their company creates alignment of incentives and a sharp focus on collaborative excellence, which is a virtuous cycle that we believe in and espouse.
Swiggy is preparing for its upcoming IPO of $1.25 billion for which it received shareholders’ approval in April. Zomato, seen as Swiggy's main competitor as a food and grocery delivery giant, went public in 2021.
Earlier this year, Swiggy’s valuation was marked up at $12.7 billion by American investment firm Invesco. After this, a fund managed by US-based asset manager Baron Capital has marked up the valuation of Swiggy to $15.1 billion according to regulatory filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The latest valuation is of March 31. During Swiggy’s fundraise in 2022 which Invesco led and Baron participated, its valuation was marked at $10.7 billion which first made it a decacorn.
In 2023, Swiggy faced several valuation cuts due to high cash burn and poor margins. Since then, it has been financially recovering. In the run-up to going public, Swiggy also fired 380 employees (or 6 per cent) of its workforce) in January this year in an effort to cut costs.
This came after Swiggy recorded a $200 million loss for nine months leading up to December in FY24, according to Reuters. The news agency also reported that for the full FY23 Swiggy made a loss of $500 million according to documents accessed by it. Zomato reported a profitable FY24 following a slump the previous year.