Social media company ShareChat has decided to reward its existing employees by allotting fresh equity shares worth $14 Mn under its ESOP pool. With the fresh infusion of $14 Mn equity shares, the Bengaluru based company’s ESOP pool now stands at approximately $35 Mn.
With the latest ESOP pool top-up, the company said that it has now extended ESOP to every employee on its payroll including administrative staff who were not holding any ESOP earlier.
Additionally, ShareChat has announced 50% additional ESOPs as bonus for the existing employees holding ESOPs in the company.
The decision was taken to recognize their hard work behind the incredible growth achieved by both ShareChat and its recently launched short video platform, Moj, the company said in the press release.
“The foundation of our existence has been purely our people, combined with their passion and energy. Our growth since inception has not been without challenges, but we have always managed to come out of these challenges unscathed just on the strength of our people. The additional ESOP is a measure of small appreciation for this commitment, and recognition of our team’s efforts. The new pool will keep us well placed for rewarding our teams in the future as well” said Ankush Sachdeva CEO & Co-founder, ShareChat.
Simultaneously, the company has released a slew of growth numbers that show that MAU (monthly active users) on its flagship app and recently released Moj app has been increasing. The company claims that it has exceeded 160 million MAUs, with 31 minutes daily average user spent. The Moj app, on other hand, has garnered 80 million MAUs.
According to the Google play store, the Moj app has more than 5 Cr downloads. The Moj app along with Time Internet’s Taka Tak app are probably the only Indian apps that have a realistic chance of catching up with the Chinese app Snack video. Snack video has already crossed the 10 Cr download mark on Google play store and is now in the pole position to become the no 1 video sharing app in India.
In the aftermath of TikTok ban, ShareChat recently made two back-to-back acquisitions in order to consolidate its position in the market. First, it acquired hyper-local information platform Circle Internet in August and after almost three weeks it acquired video production startup HPF films.