OYO Hotels & Homes, one of India’s largest hotels aggregators with significant operations in Southeast Asia, today announced that it is raising US$1.5 billion in Series F round.
RA Hospitality Holdings will infuse approximately US$700 million as primary capital, with the remaining US$800 million coming from other existing investors.
RA Hospitality is owned by OYO Founder and CEO Ritesh Agarwal. Earlier this year, RA Hospitality received Competition Commission of India’s approval to invest US$2 billion in OYO.
In order to facilitate this transaction, existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital are selling a part of their shareholding in OYO to help Agarwal increase his stake.
A huge chunk of the money will go into continuing its growth in the US and Europe.
This round comes about a year after OYO raised over US$1 billion led by SoftBank Vision Fund. Existing investors Lightspeed, Sequoia and Greenoaks Capital also participated. New strategic partners like Airbnb also co-invested.
In a short span of six years, OYO has expanded its presence in 80-plus countries. It includes China (with presence in 338 cities and over 590,000 rooms), followed by Indonesia (presence in 100-plus cities and over 27,000 rooms).
In the UK, OYO has a presence in 30 destinations and over 3,500 rooms, and in the US in 60 cities, 21 states and over 7,500 rooms.
At the moment, OYO employs over 20,000 people.
Agarwal said: “The growth across verticals in India and globally has been phenomenal and we truly believe that we will be able to build a truly global brand out of India while ensuring that the business is run efficiently and with a clear path to profitability. Our immediate goal, however, is to make forward-looking investments so we can achieve our mission while delivering on our fiduciary responsibility to our investors by building a sustainable business.”
The post Founder to invest US$700M in OYO as part of new US$1.5B round; to expand in US, Europe appeared first on e27.