Urban Company announces Rs 150 Cr Partner Stock Ownership Plan (PSOP)

Gurugram-based home services marketplace Urban Company has announced a Partner Stock Ownership Plan (PSOP) for its service providers. 

Under this plan, the company will award stocks worth Rs 150 crore to thousands of service partners over the next 5-7 years, according to a statement. The company will set up an evergreen trust to manage the PSOP plan, and award them at near zero cost to service partners. The company has already got board approval for the first tranche of Rs 75 crore worth of stocks, to be disbursed over the next 3-4 years. 

According to Raghav Chandra, Co-Founder of Urban Company,

“This is perhaps the first of its kind plan globally, where gig workers become shareholders of the very platform they work with. This will allow our service partners to benefit from the company’s growth in the coming years. This PSOP plan underscores our commitment to empower service partners and treat them as equal stakeholders in the company building journey.”

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The startup, in the statement, also added that it will set up a fair and meritocratic process to grant these stocks, taking into account both the performance of service partners and their longevity on the platform. The entire process will be rule-based and transparent, with an advisory panel providing overall guidance. 

Commenting on the PSOP plan, Abhinav Chaturvedi, Partner with Accel, and an investor and board member of Urban Company said, 

“Over the years, Urban Company has put in many programmes such as up-skilling, training, group insurance coverage, personal loans, vaccination support, etc. to empower the service professionals on its platform. The PSOP plan is a step forward in this direction for partners to financially benefit from the value created on the Urban Company platform.”

The unicorn claims that it has always had a structured approach towards partner development and well-being centered around four key pillars: improved earnings, safety net, training, and wealth creation. As per the recently released UC Earnings Index, partners who delivered at least 30 orders a month, earned Rs 30,455 per month, with the top quartile of partners earning Rs 38,263 per month. Further, according to the findings of PGA Labs’ Earnings Benchmarking Study, Urban Company partners earn at least 60 percent higher net monthly earnings than their offline counterparts while working for considerably fewer hours (almost 50 percent less). 

To upskill service partners both on technical and soft skills, the company has also made significant investments in training. The company’s training programmes range from 7 days to 45 days, depending on the candidate’s skill level and profession chosen. Since 2014, the company has invested more than Rs 100 crore  in training and skilling of its partners. The company operates over 100 training centers pan India, and has an in-house team of 200+ full time trainers. 

Urban Company also offers a safety net to its partners in the form of insurance and access to financial support. All active partners on the UC platform in India are covered under the Group Life and Accidental Insurance cover. Some of the key aspects covered under the policy are life insurance (Rs 6 lakh), disability cover (Rs 6 lakh), accidental hospitalization (Rs 70,000), accidental OPD treatment (Rs 10,000), among others. 

Founded in November 2014, Urban Company, through its mobile app and website, operates in 50+ cities in India, the UAE, Singapore, Australia, and The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It has a partner network of over 32,000 hand-picked service professionals, who are empowered through training, technology, financial services, tools, product procurement, insurance and a host of other ecosystem enablers.

The firm is also planning to go public and has already started its internal process but according to the CEO and Co-founder Abhiraj Bhal, there is no framed timeline for this.