Edtech startup Unacademy has announced its largest ESOP (employee stock ownership plan) buyback plan worth $10.5 million for its team members and educators.
Co-Founder Roman Saini tweeted on September 4 that it was the third and largest buyback by the Bengaluru-based online learning firm, as he thanked employees for “believing in our vision of democratising education”.
Happy to announce Unacademy's largest ESOPs buyback till date worth $10.5M for our team members and educators. This is our third buyback till date.Extremely thankful to all our team members and educators for believing in our vision of democratising education.
Let’s crack it!
— Roman Saini (@RomanSaini) September 4, 2021
On July 29, the SoftBank-backed company said it was planning to give stock options to educators on its platform to “motivate them and retain quality talent”.
“We are announcing Teacher Stock Options (TSOPs) for all Unacademy Educators. Unacademy Educators will be eligible for fully vested Stock Grants on completion of 3, 4 and 5 years with Unacademy,” co-founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal tweeted.
“On Day One (which is today) we already have more than 300 Educators eligible for the Grant which they will get immediately. Over the next few years we will give Grants of over $40M to our Educators. We are who we are because of our Educators and we want our Educators to grow and create wealth as Unacademy grows!” Munjal said.
The TSOPs move is so far unique in the education ecosystem–online or offline–even as in the offline world, teaching is said to not pay too well.
Unacademy provides test preparation services for civil services exams, engineering and medical entrance exams among others. It has also forayed into other education sub-segments, including tutoring classes for school kids.
Its investors include Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global Management and General Atlantic among others. It became a unicorn in 2020, valued at over a billion dollars when it raised money from SoftBank’s Vision Fund.
On August 2, the startup said it raised $440 million led by sovereign wealth fund Temasek, valuing it at $ 3.4 billion—a ten-fold jump in 18 months.
SoftBank, General Atlantic and Tiger Global also participated in the round. Its new investors include OYO founder Ritesh Agarwal’s family office Aroa Ventures, Korean firm Mirae Asset and Zomato’s founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal.
