Vegrow, a fresh farm produce supply chain business, has created a new Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) pool worth Rs 26 crore ($3.5 million). This arises as many early and growth-stage companies create and extend their ESOP pools, as well as buy back shares from employees.
According to the company’s regulatory filings with the MCA, Vegrow has approved a special resolution to adopt an ESOPs Plan with 16,308 options, each option exercisable into one equity share of the company.
The newly accepted ESOP pool is valued at about Rs 26 crore, or 7.24 percent of the company’s outstanding equity share capital.
The development comes after seven months of the Vegrow’s Series A round, in which the Bengaluru-based company raised $13 million from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Elevation Capital. Matrix Partners India. The startup has raised $15.5 million and is valued at around $50 million.
Praneeth Kumar, Shobhit Jain, Mrudhukar Batchu, and Kiran Naik founded Vegrow to improve the supply chain for fruits and vegetables. Its technology platform offers businesses farm discovery, quality profiling, and market intelligence, while farmers receive advisory, packaging, and logistics support from Vegrow.
According to the company, it has rapidly scaled up among both farmers and B2B customers, resulting in nearly 20-fold topline growth and a presence in over 30 cities.
In the last few years, startups in the early and growth stages have prioritised the adoption, allocation, and buyback of ESOPs to reward their employees. Several Indian startups, including Cars24, Gramophone, Slice, TheMathCompany, Bizongo, LEAD, FarEye, HomeLane, Trell, Ninjacart, Waycool, and Porter, have already announced their ESOP buyback programme for 2022.
Besides institutional investors, Vegrow also counts several angels including Sanjiv Rangrass, Rohit MA, Ramakant Sharma and Amit Lakhotia as its early backers.
