In The Big Chair - Ritesh Agarwal of OYO Rooms
OYO launched in 2013 in India but has rapidly expanded to the U.K., China and most recently to mainland Europe through the acquisition of @Leisure. The company has also raised significant funding rounds including $1 billion led by Softbank in 2018.
What began as a budget hotel platform by then 21-year old Ritesh Agarwal has grown to encompass holiday homes and corporate accommodation. OYO has made no secret of its ambition to become the largest hotel chain in the world.
Q: Barely a week goes by without an announcement from OYO about growth in a country or segment. Can you outline your vision for the company?
We started on the belief that everyone deserves a beautifully designed, chic and comfortable living space. And everyone deserves a better life. We knew we could change the way people live. We did that by upgrading bland, generic spaces and places and designing them with next‐gen chic and design moxie and offering them at hard‐to‐ignore prices, in Europe and the U.S.
We are currently present in 800 cities across 80+ countries globally including UK, US, India, Malaysia, Nepal, UAE, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines and Japan. Currently, we have over 850,000 rooms across over 23,000 hotels and over 46,000 homes globally.
