The other KMPs are CFO Akshant Goyal and company secretary Sandhya Sethia.
The CEO told employees in an internal note recently that he would be giving away around Rs 700 crore of his ESOP proceeds in FY22 to the Zomato Future Foundation. The money would be used towards the education of delivery partners’ children.The filings also showed that Deepinder waived off his salary for all of FY22. Interestingly, CFO Akshant Goyal’s salary and other benefits (excluding ESOPs) amounted to Rs 50 lakh in the quarter ending December. He waived off his salary for January, February and March. The CFO’s stock option proceeds amounted to Rs 3 crore in the second half of FY22.The filings revealed that board directors Kaushik Dutta and Namita Gupta were awarded Rs 30 lakh as remuneration and sitting fees in the last two quarters of the previous fiscal. Three other board directors – Aparna Popat Ved, Gunjan Tilak Raj Soni and Sutapa Banerjee – were paid Rs 20 lakh during the period.Several experts have been critical of the ESOP policies of startups like Zomato, Paytm and Policybazaar which listed on the bourses last year. While the companies remain lossmaking, the founders and top executives of these companies have been rewarded with large ESOP grants.Employee benefits expenses, which include the cost incurred by the firms on account of stock options to employees, have ballooned in Q4 (January-March). While Paytm’s employee spend shot up 148 percent to Rs 863 crore, Zomato’s jumped 112 percent to Rs 407 crore and Policybazaar’s rose 94 percent to Rs 374 crore. Nykaa, which has a comparatively sober ESOP programme, saw the number go up by 32 percent to Rs 91 crore.
With questions being asked about profitability, the loss-making tech companies have resorted to talking about a metric called ‘adjusted EBITDA’—which leaves out the cost of ESOPs from EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation)—in the last couple of quarters. For example, Paytm has said that it will become profitable in ‘adjusted EBITDA’ terms by 2025 and Zomato’s letter to shareholders waxes eloquent about how this metric has been improving quarter on quarter.
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