Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

India is a land of diversity. There is a unique essence in Indian culture, which no other country has. It is a land of attraction for many tourists across the globe and within the country. Not only does the tourism attracts people, but also trade affairs in India are of huge importance. People often complain of hospitality services in India, as they do not get good quality services for their stay. This scenario led to the foundation of OYO Rooms.

The founder himself experienced the same set of troubles and lack of quality in many Indian hotels. This bent him to think on making a platform where he would aggregate hotel rooms and make specific minimum quality standards for them to be followed without fail, like the food, security, pricing, and others. This aggregated rooms would then be made available in his platform for the customers.

Contents

Foundation

OYO Rooms, a Gurugram, Haryana based budget hotel network, was founded on May 21, 2013, by Ritesh Agarwal. Ritesh was 18 when he started this venture and belongs to Rayagada, Odisha. OYO Rooms was initially named as Oravel Stays.

Fundings

OYO Rooms current rule over Indian and overseas hospitality on its platform was possible due to the funding it received from various investors over the years. It raised $450 Million in a series of funding rounds.

  • It received a series B funding of $100 Million on July 1, 2015, by SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Greenoaks Capital.
  • It raised $90 Million in Series C funding on Aug 16, 2016, invested by SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Greenoaks Capital.
  • It raised a funding of $250 Million in Series D funding on Sept 7, 2017, led by SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Greenoaks Capital and Hero Enterprise.
  • It raised a funding of $10 Million in funding on Sept 12, 2017, invested by Huazhu Hotels Group.

Business Model

OYO Rooms basically aggregates rooms from various hotels all over India. It started with one hotel and is currently the holder of 1,00,000 rooms all over India and is adding 10,000 rooms every month. It is expected to clock about 2,00,000 rooms by the end of 2018.

Oyo buys rooms from hotels of all classes for a long period of time, months or some time even for half a year. They get this room at a very cheap price, because of the longer duration. They focus on the rooms rather than the hotel, they set up all the quality services to those rooms like Wifi, clean bathrooms, food availability, and others. This way a standard quality is maintained in all the OYO rooms.

These rooms are then rented to the customers at a bit higher price, but still much lesser than what one would have to pay for the same. They make a margin of about 20% from each room.

They partner the hotels all across India and help them grow through the platform and in return earn profits.

Competition

The founders of India’s largest hospitality company look forward to working towards creating a hassle-free, technology-driven and affordable hospitality stay always. Its top competitors are Treebo Hotels, fabHotels, Vista Rooms, and many more. 

Acquisitions

OYO Rooms has acquired the company Novascotia Boutique Homes in March 2018. Novascotia is a serviced apartment operator that offers rental apartments, housekeeping, dining, transport and laundry services.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *