Edtech platform Unacademy announces stock options for its 300 educators

Bengaluru headquartered edtech firm Unacademy on Thursday announced stock options for its 300 educators, similar to Employee Stock Option Plan (ESOP).  

CEO of Unacademy, Gaurav Munjal, took to social media platform Twitter to announce the Teacher Stock Options (TSOPs) as an incentive for those teachers who have been with the platform for long. 

Munjal said that teachers on the platform will be eligible for fully vested stock options on completing three, four and five years on the platform.  

Around 300 teachers on the platform were eligible for the grant on day one, ie, July 29, 2021.  

The company also promised to allocate $40 million (Rs 297.1 crore) in TSOPs over the next few years without specifying a timeline.

We are announcing Teacher Stock Options (TSOPs) for all Unacademy Educators.

— Gaurav Munjal (@gauravmunjal) July 29, 2021

It wasn’t clear whether the corpus was being created in addition to the existing ESOP pool in the company or will it be a part of the ESOP pool in place.  

"The issuance will be subject to the tenure of the Educator on the platform. TSOPs grant will be equivalent to 3 months of base pay after the completion of 5 years, 2 months of base pay after the completion of 4 years and 1 month of base pay for a 3 year vintage," a spokesperson for Unacademy told TechCircle.  

ESOPs are granted as an incentive by companies, especially startups to attract talent while conserving capital in salary payouts in the early stages.  

With multiple startups maturing in the ecosystem and raising growth rounds, 2021 has seen multiple ESOP liquidity events for companies including Locus, Moglix, Flipkart, upGrad and Whatfix.   

Unacademy had announced its second ESOP liquidity event in December 2020, with a buyback pool of Rs 25 to Rs 30 crore.  

It had also expanded its ESOP pool in May 2020. The test prep platform also recently announced Rs 100 crore grant for teachers, influencers, content creators and subject experts to launch their online academy on its new product platform, Graphy.