Urban Company has announced an industry-first 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.
The company will set up an evergreen trust to manage the PSOP plan and award them at a 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.
Commenting on the PSOP plan, Raghav Chandra, Cofounder of Urban Company said “Urban Company’s Partner Stock Ownership Plan (PSOP) 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. 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.”
The company 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 & an investor and board member of Urban Company said, “Over the years, Urban Company has put in many programs 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.”
Urban Company has always had a structured approach towards partner development and well-being centered around 4 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 INR 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% higher net monthly earnings than their offline counterparts while working for considerably fewer hours (almost 50% less).
To upskill service partners both on technical and soft skills, the company has also made significant investments in training. The company’s training programs 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 INR 100 crores in the 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.