OYO secures $10 million funding from China Lodging Group
OYO Rooms, the budget hotel aggregator in India, has raised $10 million funding from Chinese hotel management firm China Lodging Group in a Series-D funding round. The firm is expected to have invested in OYO at the same valuation of $850-900 million at which Softbank recently invested $250 million in the firm. Ritesh Agarwal, CEO of OYO, said that “This partnership will allow us to facilitate, strengthen and build a global market leading hospitality business. It will combine the technology strengths and operations expertise of OYO with China Lodging Group’s extensive coverage and strong development capability in China”.
China Lodging Group is a major player in the Chinese mainland with a total number of 612 hotels contracted or under construction, including 30 leased hotels and 582 franchised hotels, with 3,59,530 rooms in operation. Comparing to OYO, it operates 8,500 hotels and 70,000 rooms in more than 230 cities across the country. The founder CEO further added that “This could include exchange programs for employees, sharing of technology and intellectual property. The partnership is also expected to leverage benefits from economies of scale, not limited to, sourcing and procurement and joint loyalty programs”.