This Indian startup’s latest funding is also going to make its employees rich

• Logistics startup Blackbuck raised $150 million in a series D round led by Goldman Sachs Investment Partners and Silicon Valley-based Accel.
• Blackbuck employees have the option to liquidate 25% of their total vested stocks, at the current stock price of the company.

In the Indian startup world, talks have been doing the rounds – which one is going to hit the unicorn club next? And if you have been a part of these discussions, two logistics startups names have always come in – Rivigo and Blackbuck. All eyes have been on funding announcements by either of these startups, to know that they have ferried their way into being a unicorn.

Well, Blackbuck announced its funding on Wednesday, and although it has fallen a few million short of being a unicorn (it is currently valued at $950 million) – it had another interesting Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) round.

The online marketplace for trucking has raised $150 million from Goldman Sachs Investment Partners and Silicon Valley-based Accel, along with Wellington, Sequoia Capital, B Capital and LightStreet and existing investors Sands Capital and International Finance Corporation.

“With this round of financing, we will invest to deepen our presence across the national market. Significant investments will be made into product development and data sciences, both these dimensions are core to BlackBuck’s marketplace approach”, said Rajesh Yabaji, CEO & Co-Founder of BlackBuck.

However, along with this round Blackbuck employees had the option to liquidate 25% of their total vested stocks, at the current stock price of the company. According to the company’s official statement, over the last four years, the company’s employee stock option (ESOP) plan created a cumulative value of over $43 million and the company continues to invest heavily in this direction.

The logistics startup made this offer available to its employees for the second time. In 2017, when the company was still an early entrant in the today’s $150 billion long haul road transportation industry in India, had offered its employees to liquidate their stocks for 11X returns.

The move comes in to ensure employee growth along with the company’s growth.

BlackBuck has over 300,000 trucks and 60,000+ fleet owners on its platform and services major companies including Coca Cola, HUL among others.

See Also:
Delhivery becomes India’s first unicorn in 2019, thanks to SoftBank
Indian funding deal value in the first three months of 2019 is over half of last year's total