Oyo on a funding roll! Gets $10 million from China Lodging Group

Hospitality firm Oyo on Wednesday said that it is raising an additional USD 10 million from Nasdaq-listed Chinese hotel operator China Lodging Group.

The investment will happen as per an agreement signed between the two companies under which they will combine the technical strengths and operations expertise of Oyo with China Lodging Group's coverage in China.

The investment will happen as a follow-on to Oyo’s recently announced Series D financing of USD 250 million led by SoftBank Vision Fund.

"The MoU signifies the shared aspirations of China Lodging Group and OYO to explore growth opportunities in the global hospitality industry and to create synergies by working together,” said Jenny Zhang, CEO, China Lodging Group.

“The partnership will draw on the strengths of China Lodging Group’s visionary and experienced management team, market leadership through a multi-brand strategy, extensive hotel operations expertise and strong loyalty program and Oyo’s advanced technologies in the hospitality industry that enables the transformation of hotel operations,” he added.

"China Lodging Group has an experienced leadership team and hotel operations expertise especially in managing large properties. Oyo is a new-age technology company disrupting the hospitality industry with category-leading capabilities of using technology to onboard and transforms existing supply, standardize operations and distribute these through online and offline channels," said Ritesh Agarwal, founder and CEO, Oyo.

China and India are among the fastest growing travel markets in the world with an emerging domestic travel opportunity. According to Deutsche Bank, nearly two-thirds of India’s rooms supply in 2020-21 will comprise of budget hotels. Criteo expects online travel market in Asia Pacific to be worth USD 446 billion in value by 2020, witnessing a 72 percent growth between 2016-2020.

Oyo estimates mid-market accommodation alone to be worth USD 20 billion by 2020.