OYO Rooms
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| 250px | |
| Founder | Ritesh Agarwal |
|---|---|
| Founded at | India |
| Headquarters | Gurgaon, Haryana, India |
| Website | www |
OYO Rooms, commonly known as OYO, is an Indian brand which functions as a hotel room aggregator. OYO currently operates in more than 170 Indian cities including Ahmedabad, Delhi, Gurgaon, Jaipur, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Goa, Chennai, Kolkata, and others. OYO is present in major metros, regional hubs, leisure destinations and pilgrimage towns. The company's CEO and Founder, Ritesh Agarwal, announced OYO's launch in Malaysia through a post on the company's official blog in Jan 2016.[1]
According to a research carried out by CB Insights for The New York Times, OYO has been deemed as one of the upcoming start-up unicorns.[2] The company is backed by investors like the Softbank Group, Greenoaks Capital, Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed India.[3]
OYO provides standardized hotel rooms with features such as an air-conditioner, TV, complimentary breakfast and Wi-Fi with 24x7 customer service support. There is also an OYO app for guests for booking rooms, ordering beverages and requesting room service.
Contents
Business Model
OYO is a branded aggregator of hotels. OYO partners with hotels with the aim of standardization on various measures in each room including free WiFi and breakfast, flat-screen TVs, spotless white bed linen of a certain thread count, branded toiletries, 6-inch shower heads, a beverage tray and so on. The standards are audited every few days so that the customers are assured of a quality experience. OYO’s budget stays range from 999 ($16) to 12000 rupees ($165). OYO provides property owners with support such as quality standardized supplies and service training.[4]
Founder
Ritesh Agarwal, is the founder and CEO of OYO. Ritesh started his entrepreneurial journey when he was 17 years old. He dropped out of college and launched his first start‐up Oravel Stays Pvt. Ltd. in the year 2012.[5] Oravel was designed as a platform to enable listing and booking of budget and premium accommodations. He soon realized that the budget hospitality sector lacked predictability. Therefore, he pivoted Oravel to OYO in 2013 with the key proposition of offering affordable and standardized accommodation.[6]
Ritesh was selected for the Thiel Fellowship, a two-year program started by PayPal founder, Peter Thiel, in 2013. Through the fellowship Ritesh received a support grant of $100,000 to pursue his start-up idea.[7]
Ritesh's story has been widely covered by the Indian media.[8] He has won Business World Young Entrepreneur Award[9] and the TiE-Lumis Entrepreneurial Excellence Award.[10] More recently, he was named by Forbes in its "30 Under 30" list in the consumer tech sector.[11]
Funding
OYO got its first round of funding from Venture Nursery in December 2012.[12] Then another round of funding came from Lightspeed Ventures in February 2014.[13] In March 2015, OYO raised $25 million from Lightspeed, Sequoia and others.[14] After that in July 2015, OYO raised $100 million from SoftBank.[15] Again in April 2016, OYO raised $100 million from SoftBank, thus making its valuation at more than $225 million, hence ranking it in one of the top 5 startups in India.[16]
Growth
OYO started with 1 city and 1 hotel (OYO Rooms Huda City Centre) in Gurgaon in May 2013 and has seen a tremendous growth. The company as of November 2015 has 10,000+ hotels (more than 100,000 rooms) in 250 + cities of India.[17] OYO has been named India's largest budget hotel chain.[18] Recently, OYO launched in Malaysia.[19]
Awards
Express IT Awards - Start-up of the Year,[20] India International Travel Mart Award and Lufthansa ET Now Runway to Success Award.[21]
Listing of hotels
OYO reaches out to prospective hotels to partner with them. A hotel owner can also reach out to OYO through their webpage.[22] The OYO team then contacts the hotel and audits the hotel to understand the changes needed to standardize the property as per OYO standards, and shares other details of the partnership agreement.
OYO is now active in more than 160 cities across India and growing rapidly.
Booking Platforms
OYO can be booked from multiple platforms, including the OYO app on Android, iOS and Windows Phone.[23] A person can also login to their website to book a room.
See also
References
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