The Gurugram-based online hospitality company OYO is now officially entering the Chinese market. OYO is a Softbank backed firm and China is its third international destination after Malaysia and Nepal.
The investor of OYO that is Softbank is showing high hopes and support in favour of the hospitality company. SoftBank Group’s chairman and chief executive Masayoshi Son addressed OYO Hotels as the ‘next generation hotel company using the internet service’. He is also determined to bolster up OYO hotels in China through a joint venture.”
“I would really like to introduce this (OYO Hotels) company to all of you. The founder (Ritesh Agarwal), as of today, is only 23 years old. He founded the company when he was only 19 years old. Only four years have passed but it is growing exponentially,” said Masayoshi Son.
The CEO also claims that OYO hotels is the biggest company in the hospitality market and has 100k rooms of its own. Softbank Group has plans to continue its investment in the online hospitality company and remain positive towards its growth.
The move has been taken nine months after one of the world’s largest multi-brand hotel groups, China Lodging Group invested $10 million funds in the company during September last year. Then it signed a MoU with the investor group to take forward and strengthen partnership to build a global hospitality business.
“With our expertise in managing chain of hotels backed by technological innovations, we will further continue to strengthen our footprint while empowering neighborhood hotels to emerge in the same league as the big boys of hospitality,” said Ritesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO of OYO.
OYO is now spreading its presence internationally and its next stop is now China after building a market in two countries apart from India. The company claims to have more than 11,000 rooms on a franchised or manchised model across 26 cities including Hangzhou, Xian, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Xiamen and Kunming among others.