India: India’s largest budget hotel chain OYO Rooms is in talks with a Los Angeles based firm to take over its Indian operations.
Los Angeles-based Berggruen Holdings, a private equity and venture capital firm worth $2 billion, runs Berggruen Hotels in India under the Keys Hotels brand.
It operates hotels and serviced apartments across 20 cities including Gurugram, Chennai, Mumbai and hill stations including Manali and Mahabaleshwar.
OYO, led by Ritesh Agarwal, has been expanding rapidly and is looking to invest in or acquire apartments, co-working or co-living spaces.
It is close to acquiring co-working space Innov8 in a Rs 200 crore all-cash deal.
OYO Rooms had an inventory of 458,000 rooms globally by the end of 2018. “We will have one million rooms inventory into our fold in the near distant future. I think, it should happen in a year and a half,” OYO CEO, India and South Asia, Aditya Ghosh said. This will help OYO to become the “world’s top player from number three now”, he claimed.
The company has set a target of 2.5 million rooms by 2023. It has recently strengthened its position in the Chinese and Indonesian markets, as well as making its debut in the US.
At present, OYO has more than 13,000 franchised and leased hotels. The company has changed from the aggregator model to own inventories through the franchisee or lease operation model. Global room nights saw a 430 per cent rise year on year growth from six million in December 2016 to 75 million in December 2018.
