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Home services marketplaceUrban Company has announced a partner stock ownership plan (PSOP) for gig workers or service partners associated with the platform and will be awarding stocks worth ₹150 crore to them over the next 5-7 years.
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 received the board’s approval for the first tranche of ₹75 crore worth of stocks to be disbursed over the next 3-4 years.
Raghav Chandra, co-founder of Urban Company, said, “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.”
Meritocratic process
The company plans to set up a meritocratic process to grant these stocks, taking into account both the performance of service partners and their longevity on the platform. The company will also institute an advisory panel to provide overall guidance.
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.”
Founded in November 2014, Urban Company is a home services marketplace which offers services such as beauty and spa at home, cleaning, plumbing, carpentry, appliance repair, painting, etc. through its mobile app and website. It operates in 50+ cities in India, the UAE, Singapore, Australia and Saudi Arabia. It has a network of over 32,000 service professionals or gig workers.
In December 2021, Urban Company partners in the salon category organised a strike outside the company’s Delhi NCR office. The protests were being held against the company’s introduction of a subscription fee-based work guarantee programme called MG (minimum guarantee) plan and categorisation of workers as flexi, smart, and plus.
Later, Urban Company filed a court petition against the service partners protesting outside its office calling the ongoing protests “illegal.” Earlier in October 2021 too, several beauty partners at Urban Company have organised a strike to protest against the company’s “unfair working conditions”.
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