Housing.com plans to distribute Yadav’s shares in the form of Phantom, Employees Outraged.

About a year ago Rahul Yadav former CEO of housing.com: (India’s real estate search portal), gifted 5% of his company share to all the employees (2250 in number then). It was an anticipated announcement that also led to great stumble in competition and made Rahul yadav modern Steve Jobs. 

Now Housing.com’s new management, after months of trying to figure how to distribute the shares to employees past and present, on January 12 announced in an email to the staff that they would get their share of Yadav's gift in the form of phantom stock units. With this decision many employees who were to get shares are angry and threaten housing to take action. 

According to housing’s management, issuing actual shares to all employees would have created tax liabilities for the company and made it a public limited company. 

"Legally, we cannot redistribute Rahul's shares. The only legally permissible way to provide the intended benefit of Rahul's shares to qualifying employees and ex-employees is through the issue of PSUs," a Housing.com spokesperson told ET. 

Yadav, in a text message to ET, said he had given up the shares 9 months ago and wasn’t up-to-date on the latest developments. “(The equity gift) was given keeping in mind that each employee gets tens of lacs (lakhs)… so that all can afford a house,” Yadav said, adding that he was not aware of the terms of the phantom stocks or who now controlled employee stocks. 

The 27-year-old, who co-founded Housing in 2012, recently founded data analytics firm Intelligent Interfaces, which has received angel funding from Flipkart co-founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal as well as Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma.