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ESOPDhan to ease owning stock by high growth startup employees

by Trans World Features | @twfindia 12 Jan 2023, 05:52 am

Mumbai: ESOPDhan, a newly founded financial services firm, which seeks to ease the acquisition of stock options by employees of high-growth SaaS start-ups, is all set to unveil its lending offerings.

ESOPDhan has been set up by angel investing veterans Shravan Shroff and Nitin Agarwal.

The firm solves the cash flow mismatch problem that employees face while converting their ESOPs into equity upon vesting and ensuring that taxation is optimized. ESOPDhan’s offerings are designed to help employees maximise wealth creation.

As of date, ESOPDhan has funded India based employees of two US-headquartered high growth tech companies, and discussions are currently underway with 2-3 more India based unicorns.

“Our experience with start-up teams over the years threw up many concerns of employees rewarded with ESOPs. These ranged from ‘How to get funds to subscribe for ESOPs and pay the exercise cost and perquisite tax’ to ‘How not to lose opportunities to create wealth’, and ‘How to get quick cash while retaining their stocks’,” says Shravan Shroff, co-founder of ESOPDhan.

“ESOPDhan aspires to be the funding partner of choice in the world of ESOPs by devising added features like ‘No EMIs’ and ‘repayment upon liquidity events’,” he added.

Industry estimates the value of vested ESOPs by employees of Indian Unicorns till date to be more than USD 10 billion. The value of vested ESOPS is expected to grow at a fast clip in the coming years.

Moreover, by enabling employees to exercise their stock options early they benefit by way of lower taxes on the sale of stocks.

ESOPDhan will work with identified late-stage high growth companies with a growing customer base.