Comments
Hospitality services company OYO Rooms, which teams up with hotels across the country to offer various services, is on a major expansion drive.
Within six months of its entry into Hyderabad, the OYO Rooms network has swelled to a portfolio of 1,162 rooms, and the number is set to rapidly expand, said Kavikrut, Chief Growth Officer of OYO Rooms, at a press conference here.
OYO Rooms has so far partnered with properties in metros and other cities across the country and is in the process of expanding into the pilgrim centres of Tirupati, Shirdi and Varanasi, he added.
Describing OYO as a branded network of hotels, Kavikrut said it had raised over $125 million across four rounds of funding from January 2014 to March 2015, with the last tranche of $100 million funded by SoftBank.
Its earlier investors include Lightspeed and Sequoia Capital.
The company ties up with properties and takes a percentage of the room tariff. The price point for both hotel rooms and serviced apartments starts at ₹899 and goes up to ₹3,999.
OYO employs about 1,300 people engaged in marketing and backend support to various properties it has tied up with.
It has also developed customised applications for properties and end users. “As we expand, we expect to recruit 700 people during the year,” said Kavikrut.
The company’s growth can be assessed from the fact that month-on-month the number of bookings is going up, he said. “If it was 1,10,000 rooms booked in June 2015, it was up at 1,80,000 rooms in July and this has shot up to 4,00,000 rooms in August.”
“There is a latent demand for well presented rooms. The growth in business volumes is an indicator. We are adequately funded and have enough resources to meet expansion. We are still in the investment phase,” he explained.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.