OYO Rooms Goes International; Launches In Malaysia

Branded budget-hotel marketplace OYO Rooms has marked its entry in the Southeast Asian market with the launch in Malaysia.

Speaking on the development, Ritesh Agarwal, founder & CEO at OYO Rooms said, “Malaysia is our first port-of-call given the attractive characteristics of the market such as higher-than-average mobile penetration and a large internet population. Unbranded hotel room supply accounts for a majority share of hotel supply worldwide. OYO’s model is suitable for markets with large share of unbranded budget supply such as South-east Asia, Africa and South America.”

He expressed his excitement over the fact that OYO will provide global platform for Indian talent to showcase passion and execution-focus on entrepreneurial projects.

The startup started from a single city and touched the 100-city mark last year. Currently, there are more than 160 cities including all metro cities. Hotels that convert to the OYO brand have shown an increase in demand from the startup’s aggregated consumer base. The company has scaled to offer 40,000 rooms in its network.

In 2015, OYO Rooms had raised $100 Mn funding led by SoftBank Corp and its existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital India and Greenoaks Capital. Last year, a number of startups including Zo Rooms, Wudstay Hotels, FabHotels, Treebo Hotels and GoStays emerged in the market as OYO’s competitors.