In an industry-first initiative, popular home services firm Urban Company on March 2 announced a partner stock ownership plan (PSOP) for all of its gig workers and service providers.
Under this plan, the company is reportedly getting ready to award stocks amounting to Rs 150 crore to its extensive network of service partners over a period of 5-7 years at zero cost. While there are talks of establishing an evergreen trust to manage these affairs, the company has already steamrolled ahead with the board approving the disbursal of the first tranche of stock worth Rs 75 crore over the next 3-4 years.
The processes designed to award these stocks will be "fair, transparent and meritocratic, taking into account the performance and longevity of the service partners with the platform".
“Urban Company’s partner stock ownership plan will help thousands of service partners become shareholders of the company, thereby enabling broad-based wealth creation through equity sharing. This is perhaps the first-of-its-kind plan globally, where gig workers become shareholders of the very platform they work with," said Raghav Chandra, Co-founder, Urban Company.
"This will allow our service partners to benefit from the company’s growth in the coming years. This PSOP underscores our commitment to empower service partners and treat them as equal stakeholders in the company building journey," Chandra noted.
The PSOP is yet another brick in Urban Company's wall of providing proactive support to its partners by means of programmes related to "up-skilling, training, group insurance coverage, personal loans, and vaccination support".
UrbanCompany presently provides financial support in the form of group life and accidental insurance to all its active Indian partners. This includes life insurance worth Rs 6 lakh, disability cover worth Rs 6 lakh, accidental hospitalisation worth Rs 70,000 and an accidental OPD treatment worth Rs 10,000, among others.
