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OYO cuts 25% of fixed pay of Employees; sends some staff on Leave

22Apr By Press Trust of IndiaNo Comments

News

OYO cuts 25% of fixed pay of Employees; sends some staff on Leave

Softbank backed online hotel room booking platform OYO informed employees that 25 percent of their fixed salaries will be cut and asked some staff to go on a four-month leave with limited benefits from May 4 as the hotel rooms aggregator grapples with "economic pressures" due to COVID-19. The company, which has around 10,000 employees in the country, is a leading player in the hospitality industry that has been ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic. The nationwide lockdown, which has been extended till May 3, to curb spreading of infections has also significantly disrupted economic activities. "We had to take the hard decision of placing some OYOpreneurs on a leave with limited benefits (LwLB) from May 4, 2020, for four months until August 2020," OYO India and South Asia CEO Rohit K...

OYO elevates India & South Asia CEO Aditya Ghosh to Board of Directors

2Dec By Press Trust of IndiaNo Comments

News

OYO elevates India & South Asia CEO Aditya Ghosh to Board of Directors

Indian Hospitality firm OYO has elevated Aditya Ghosh, currently chief executive officer (India & South Asia) for the hotels and homes business, as a member of its board of directors. Rohit Kapoor, currently CEO of the new real estate businesses of the company, has been appointed as CEO (India & South Asia) for OYO Hotels & Homes, it added. Ghosh will join OYO Hotels & Homes founder & Group CEO Ritesh Agarwal, Baja Corporation founder & CEO Betsy Atkins and other industry experts like Munish Varma, Bejul Somaia and Mohit Bhatnagar, among others, on the company’s board, OYO Hotels & Homes said in a statement. In his role on the board, Ghosh will focus on five key areas namely, safety and security, customer experience, corporate governance, revenue manage...

OYO founder buy back shares worth $2 bn from early investors

20Jul By PriyankaNo Comments

BUSINESS

OYO founder buy back shares worth $2 bn from early investors

Hospitality firm OYO founder Ritesh Agarwal has signed a deal to buy back shares worth $2 billion (nearly Rs 13,770 crore) from early investors through his Cayman islands-registered entity, RA Hospitality Holdings. Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sequoia India, OYO's early supporters, are selling part of their holdings in order to help the founder increase his stake while remaining invested significantly in the company's long-term mission, OYO said in a statement. "Company's founder and CEO Ritesh Agarwal, through RA Hospitality Holdings (Cayman), has signed $2 billion primary and secondary management investment round, supported by global institutional banks and his financial partners," it added. According to Pixr8 sources, after the entire process is completed, Agarwal's stake in...

1Apr By reutersNo Comments

FUNDING

Airbnb invests in OYO’s series E funding round

Home-renting company Airbnb has invested in Indian hotel reservation start-up OYO's series E funding round, as it dives deeper into the hotel-booking business. Airbnb did not disclose the details of its investment in OYO, however, as per sources, the round is close to between $100-$200 million. It expects revenue to more than treble every year over the next five years, as it expands locally and in international markets, a senior company executive told Reuters earlier this year."Airbnb's strong global footprints and access to local communities will open up new opportunities for OYO Hotels & Homes..." said Maninder Gulati, global chief strategy officer at OYO Hotels & Home. U.S.-based Airbnb will look at ways to make the OYO accommodation available on its platform, the co...

7Dec By PriyankaNo Comments

INDIA

In a first, Indian Government is Planning To Regularize Online Travel Booking

India government in a first its kind of move will setup certain guidelines for Online travel aggregators like Air B&B, Makemytrip, Yatra and Oyo to be recognised by the Tourism Ministry in order to operate, a senior official said. For the first time, the ministry has prepared a set of guidelines by which it will approve and classify online travel aggregators (OTAs) ensuring reliability of their services. The scheme for approval/re-approval of OTAs will be rolled out online by the end of this month and all applications and fee payment will have to be made on it, the ministry official said. "The scheme will set standards towards accreditation and add value to the dependability and reliability to the aggregators in the online space operating in the organised tourism sector," he a...

12Aug By NitishNo Comments

ACQUISITION

OYO Acquires Wedding Platform Weddingz

India's one of the leading hotel booking platform OYO acquires online wedding marketplace platform Weddingz in a cash-and-stock deal. Though the amount of the deal has not been disclosed. This is the third acquisition of Softbank backed company in this year. The Gurgaon based company acquired 100% stake in the wedding platform. The platform was backed by early-stage venture capital firms Singularity Ventures and Sixth Sense Ventures “We look at supply, whether it’s hotels, homes or banquets and are always interested in companies that have it and operate in a very similar manner to OYO,” said Maninder Gulati, chief strategy officer at OYO. Founded in 2015 by Sandeep Lodha, Weddingz is India's leading wedding planning platform. After the acquisition, OYO will not change the company ...

Paytm Acquires a Hospitality Startup ‘NightStay’

4Jul By Gauri SinghNo Comments

ACQUISITION

Paytm Acquires a Hospitality Startup ‘NightStay’

The digital payment giant Paytm has taken over a Delhi-based company called ‘NighStay Travels’ that helps the customers to book hotels last minute. The acquisition has been made for around $2o million (around Rs 130 crore) in a cash-and-equity deal, through which Paytm is entering the hospitality space as well. Founded by Nasr Khan and Deepak Negi, NighStay is basically a mobile-based marketplace that offers its customers attractive deals and unbeatable prices for various luxury hotels. The company currently operates across 12 cities that are Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Goa, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Kochi, Pune, Agra and Chandigarh. Paytm will bring in the entire NightStay team. Talking about the investment part, it has been reported that the hospitality company had ...

17Apr By NitishNo Comments

FUNDING

Luxury Hotel Booking Platform For Business Class Raises $200000 Funding

Delhi based icanstay.com, an online luxury hotel booking platform for business travelers has raised a fresh round of funding of Rs 1.30 Cr from an angel investor Mr. Manoj Prasad, executive chairman at Singapore-based venture capital and management advisory firm MP Morgan Capital Partners Pte. Ltd. Earlier the online platform has raised Rs 2.24 Cr from the same investor who has picked up 6.54 % stake in the company. The overall funds acquired are now $550000. The latest funding values icanstay at more than Rs 36 Cr, in just nine months since its commercial launch. icanstay is launched to fulfill the aspiration of millions of Indians, who have yet not experienced stay in a Luxury Hotel. As per the market study, less then 2% Indians have experienced stay in a luxury hotel. There ...

9Nov By RishabhNo Comments

News

TripAdvisor To Mark Hotels On Website Where Sexual or Any Violent Incident Took Place

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]ripAdvisor will now mark the hotels where cases of violent incident like sexual assault or rape have been reported, informing the users before they book. The travel review and booking site earlier hit the news for removing a review about Iberosar Paraiso Maya, which described a rape done by security guard at a Mexican Resort. TripAdvisor issued a public apology saying they deleted it because of the unfriendly language that was used in the review. "We apologize to the sexual assault victim reported on in the article, who had her forum post removed seven years ago on TripAdvisor. At the time, we had a policy whereby we judged content to be in breach of our guidelines if it did not adhere to family-friendly language," the post said. The controversy raised ques...

Goldman Sachs Puts $25 Mn In Budget Hotel Aggregator FabHotels

26Jul By AnkitaNo Comments

FUNDING

Goldman Sachs Puts $25 Mn In Budget Hotel Aggregator FabHotels

Budget Hotels Chain FabHotels has recently raised an amount of $25 Mn in a Series B funding round led by Goldman Sachs, an American multinational finance company, that backed the likes of Uber and Spotify. Started in 2014 by Vaibhav Aggarwal and Adarsh Manpuria, FabHotels is a branded budget hotel aggregator wherein it partners with smaller hotels for providing standardized services to budget travelers. (more…)

6May By AdityaNo Comments

INDIA

India’s First ‘Pod Hotel’ Launched in Mumbai, Cost 2000 INR Per Night

New-age travellers visiting Mumbai and its suburbs can now enjoy a stay in a unique place - Urbanpod. And no, it is not pricey! The 'Pod hotel' offers rooms at affordable rates. This is India's first Pod hotel and its facility has come up in suburban Andheri consisting of 140 units. The initial investment was done by three promoters, and for expansion, the company is open for investments from venture funds, a top official said. "With an investment of Rs 5-15 crore per hotel depending on the locality, we are looking at an average of Rs 10-20 crore investment over the next three years," Urbanpod Co-founder and Director Hiren Gandhi told Pixr8. With an average price of Rs 2,000 per night, the individual pods are built in between 50 square feet and 90 sq ft space with self-contained a...

Indian Online Travel Portal Yatra.com Listed on Nasdaq Today

20Dec By NitishNo Comments

News

Indian Online Travel Portal Yatra.com Listed on Nasdaq Today

Online travel firm Yatra Online Inc has been listed on the American stock exchange, Nasdaq, under the ticker symbol "YTRA" with effect from today. Yatra said it has completed the transaction with Terrapin 3 Acquisition Corporation (TRTL), which will result in TRTL becoming a partially owned subsidiary of Yatra. As a part of this process, Yatra has raised more than USD 92.5 million of primary capital from global investors, and the merged entity, 'Yatra Online Inc', will continue to be led by Yatra's management team, Yatra Online Inc said in a statement. Commenting on the development, Yatra Co-founder and CEO Dhruv Shringi said: "It's a matter of great pride for us to be one of the few Indian companies to be listed on Nasdaq". Over the course of the past decade, Yatra has established i...