OYO Launches Accelerator For Hoteliers To Add Over 200 Properties In Major Indian Cities

Hospitality major OYO on Thursday (March 16) unveiled an accelerator initiative under which it aims to add more than 200 properties to its kitty across major Indian cities. 

These new property additions will take place in cities such as Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Mumbai, Kolkata and Siliguri. With this, the hospitality unicorn plans to ramp up its focus on increasing the footprint of its premium hotel brands such as Townhouse Oak, OYO Townhouse, Collection O and Capital O in 2023.

Under the accelerator programme, OYO will onboard 30 ‘small and first-generation hoteliers’ over the course of the current year to help them scale their businesses. The initiative will provide financial assistance and mentorship to these budding entrepreneurs.

“OYO’s accelerator program will provide financial assistance, access to a pan India network of over 15,000 corporate accounts and 10,000+ travel agents, mentorship & guidance, dedicated relationship managers, and active monitoring of hotel level dynamic pricing…OYO is also helping them achieve long-term profitability,” the company said in a statement. 

OYO said it has already launched a pilot phase of the accelerator initiative and has onboarded two hoteliers in Hyderabad, and one each in Kolkata and Delhi. These four budding hotel-owners together operate more than 50 properties across the three cities.

The newly onboarded hotel chains include Hyderabad’s De Alphabets Group of Hotels and Delhi’s Qotel Hospitality. 

“We come across many hoteliers whose aspiration for growth and their business acumen far exceeds the capital and resources available to them…However, we realized that we will be able to encourage many more such hoteliers if we provide special focus to this initiative and move in a planned and targeted manner to help many more such small entrepreneurs,” said OYO’s chief merchant officer Anuj Tejpal.

OYO Readies For IPO

The announcement comes weeks after Inc42 exclusively reported that OYO undertook a major rejig at the company ahead of its proposed IPO. As part of the exercise, additional roles were delegated to the core team of founder Ritesh Agarwal as the company streamlined its operations. 

The recent past has also seen the startup tell its employees, in an internal meeting, that it was well on its way to turn EBITDA positive for the first time in the ongoing financial year 2022-23 (FY23).

Afterwards, the company also announced that it would refile the draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) for its public listing. It was then reported that the tentative deadline for the move would be February-end but no update has since emerged on that front. 

The startup has also been in the news for a slew of reasons. In December last year, OYO laid off 600 employees across engineering and product teams. It also sparred publicly with the Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Associations of India (FHRAI), accusing the latter of functional irregularities.

The announcement of the accelerator comes a couple of months after the hospitality founder Agarwal announced an equity-free grant of INR 5 Lakh each for four Ladakh-based startups in collaboration with the Naropa fellowship program.