Tide launches ESOP secondary sale programme

Mumbai: Tide, the UK's leading business financial platform, which began operations in India in 2020, recently facilitated the secondary sale of Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOPs) to investors for its employees in India, Bulgaria and the UK, following its recent Series-C funding, due to oversubscription.

About 50 percent of all permanent employees have been allotted ESOPs at various levels acrossall departments.

Earlier in July 2021, Tide raised more than $100 million in Series Cfunding, which brought the company's total funding to date to over$200 million. The company's post money value is now over $650 million, afteronly four years of operation. The last funding round was led by ApaxDigital, the growth equity team of Apax Partners. Existing investors,including Anthemis, Augmentum, Jigsaw, Local Globe / Latitude, SBI,and Speed-Invest also participated in the round.

Liza Haskell, Chief Administrative Officer, Tide, said: "Due to ouroversubscribed Series C round, we had enough investor interest to giveTideans (employees) an opportunity to sell a portion of their vestedshares to investors."

These shares were across all departments but varied by levels in eachdivision. Considering the complex nature of the secondary share saleprogramme, Tide held in-depth training to help employees assess theoptions available to them. It also covered the financial advisor andprocessing fees for those who chose to sell their vested shares.

Commenting on the development, Liza Haskell further emphasised, "AtTide, we believe in the value of working as one team and strive to bean employer of choice. The company has been offering ESOPs to many employeessince inception as this ensures we share in the success of ourcombined hard work to get us where we are today. Especially duringCovid times, it is one of the best ways to keep employees motivated,engaged and living by the #oneteam value."

Earlier this year, Tide announced it will create over 1,000 jobs inIndia in the next five years. These positions will be across a widevariety of roles, including product development, software development,marketing, risk and compliance, and member support.

The company already has more than 300 highly skilled employees in India withmost based in its Hyderabad technology centre. It is building arobust team in India, creating a pool of talented colleagues that willhelp build the business, scale operations and further the company's desire tounleash the true potential of Indian SMEs by helping them save time(and money) in the running of their businesses.