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Gurgaon based hotel aggregator OYO has raised a massive amount of $250 million in a much-needed funding round led by the Japanese investor, Softbank Vision Fund.The newly acquired series D funding will help OYO to compete against in rivals MakeMyTrip, Yatra, ClearTrip,
The newly acquired series D funding will help OYO to compete against in rivals MakeMyTrip, Yatra, ClearTrip, FabHotels and others. It will give a boost to their recently launched program of creating self-managed, premium hotels taken on long-term lease under the Townhouse brand. Also, it will value the startup at around $900 million, a major hike from $460 million in August 2016 when SoftBank invested $62 million in the firm. Earlier this year, OYO penetrated its roots into Nepal and Malaysia. It is further thinking of expanding into South-East Asia.
Hero Enterprise, led by Sunil Munjal emerged as a new investor in this funding round, thus adding itself to the solid line up of investors Sequoia India, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Greenoaks Capital.
Since its launch in 2013 by founder Ritesh Agarwal, OYO is operating in over 230 cities across India, Malaysia and Nepal and has over 8,500 hotels and 70,000 rooms under its name.
OYO is a leading brand in India and is known for offering high-quality standards at pocket-friendly prices for the consumers. Its rivals MakeMyTrip and GoIbibo, who joined their hands and merged last year also have launched their budget hotel aggregation ventures ValuePlus and GoStays respectively. It also has certain smaller rivals like Treebo Hotels which recently raised $34 million led by Hong Kong-based investment firms Ward Ferry Management and Karst Peak Capital.
OYO is the second Indian company to draw an investment from SoftBank’s $100 billion Vision Fund. Last month, they made a colossal investment of $2.5 billion USD in India’s largest E-Commerce portal, Flipkart. The investment is also a signal of Softbank’s interest in the hotel accommodation brand. Softbank has previously invested in major Indian enterprises like Paytm, Flipkart, Hike, Grofers and InMobi.
