CARS24 has announced an annual ESOP (employee stock ownership plan) worth AED37 million. This is the fifth year in a row CARS24 has announced ESOP buyback plans for both existing and former employees. The total value of Esop buyback announced to date is AED55 million.

Commenting on the announcement Ruchit Agarwal, Co-Founder, and CFO, CARS24 said, “This announcement demonstrates our confidence in our business and the growth we are witnessing. Our annual Esop buyback plan is an extension of our appreciation for our employees. We want to recognize and reward them for their determination and drive to achieve the unthinkable by solving unique problems each day that haven’t been solved before with respect to the used car market. For start-ups, Esops are a great way of attracting and retaining talent.”

Cars24 said it has raised $400 million led by Alpha Wave Global in December 2021. This included a $100 million debt component that was sourced from investors like the Commercial Bank of Dubai and IFM Investors in Australia. Cars24 used the capital for large-scale refurbishing labs across the country and to improve the quality of cars before they are sold to customers.

Sonam Lama, Head of People, CARS24, stated that “We are a people-centric organisation, and always on the forefront when it comes to the well-being of our employees. For us, our employees are the heart of our organisation and basically our core engine that drives our organisation forward. This ESOP buyback process is also one such example from CARS24 that not only caters to the current employees but even our former employees. We are also currently in the midst of hiring some of the best available talents in the UAE, as we are all set to scale new heights in the year ahead”.

Founded in 2015 by Vikram Chopra, Mehul Agrawal, Ruchit Agarwal, and Jangid, Cars24 became a unicorn in 2020 in a $200 million funding round led by DST Global. The company’s recently opened mega refurbishment lab (MRL) in UAE is all set to roll out close to 20000+ cars in a year. The lab will run round the clock to ensure that each vehicle undergoes a stringent 150-point quality check prior to listing the cars on its eCommerce platform.