Unacademy Skips Cash Appraisal, Speeds Up ESOP Vesting Period By A Year

SoftBank-backed Unacademy has decided to expedite the vesting period of employee stock options (ESOP) by one year for all its employees. There is being done to compensate employees who will not be getting cash appraisals this year.

“Since we are not doing any cash appraisals this year, and since all of you have been working so hard, we have decided to accelerate everyone’s vesting by one year. For options that are getting vested before August 31, 2024 acceleration will happen and vesting will be done immediately (or as soon as you complete one year). Vesting of the remaining unvested options will be preponed by a year,” Gaurav Munjal, co-founder and chief executive officer of Unacademy told his employees in an internal note, according to the sources. “This is only applicable for people who are active employees of the company and are not on notice period. This is applicable for Unacademy, Graphy, NextLevel and Cohesive. This is not applicable for Founders and Management of Companies that we acquired since we have a separate Agreement for that.”

In February, Munjal had said that Unacademy will not be giving employees a cash appraisal for FY24 (2023-24). This development comes after multiple cost-cutting measures and layoff rounds at the firm. Earlier, in an internal note to employees, Munjal had said that the firm must continue to focus on profitability because when Unacademy does an IPO, it should do it with at least four quarters of profitability. “To achieve the same, we have decided to not do any cash appraisals this year,” Munjal had said. “Instead, we will reward stock options to everyone based on their performance.”

In March this year, Unacademy announced another round of job cuts — the fourth in the last one year — as it was trimming 12 per cent of its workforce or 380 employees in a bid to “meet the goals in current realities' . With that round of layoffs, Unacademy’s workforce strength was down to under 3,000, compared to 6,000 in the early part of 2022.