case study of oyo

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OYO Case Study: History, Valuation, Product, Services & Growth

Oyo Rooms (stylized as OYO), also known as Oyo Hotels & Homes, is an Indian hotel chain. It is one of the largest and fastest-growing hospitality chains of leased and franchised hotels, homes, and living spaces. Founded in 2013 by Ritesh Agarwal, OYO initially consisted mainly of budget hotels. The startup expanded globally with thousands of hotels, vacation homes, and millions of rooms in hundreds of cities in India.

HISTORY In 2012, Ritesh Agarwal launched Oravel Stays to enable listing and booking of budget accommodations. After undertaking months of research and staying in various bed and breakfast homes, guest houses, and small hotels across India, he pivoted Oravel to OYO in 2013.

OYO partners with hotels to give similar guest experiences across cities. Shortly after launching Oravel Stays, Ritesh Agarwal received a grant of $100,000 as part of the Thiel Fellowship from Peter Thiel. OYO currently has over 17,000 employees globally, of which approximately 8000 are in India and South Asia. OYO Hotels & Homes now identify as a full-fledged hotel chain that leases and franchises assets. The company claims to invest in CAPEX, GMs to oversee operations and customer experience as well as generating around a million job opportunities in India and South Asia alone. OYO has also set up 26 training institutes for hospitality enthusiasts across India.

VALUATION – The company is currently valued at $10 billion as per the last round of funding. – September 2018 – raised $1 billion, of which the RoC filing for the amount of $100 million raised from Star Virtue Investment Ltd. was made on 13 February 2019. – October 2019 – Series F funding of $1.5 billion led by SoftBank Group, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Sequoia India. – Founder & CEO, Ritesh Agarwal, through RA Hospitality Holdings (Cayman) in 2019 signed a $2 billion primary and secondary management investment round, supported by global institutional banks and his financial partners, subject to regulatory and shareholder approvals. Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Sequoia India, OYO’s early supporters, are selling part of their holdings in order to help the founder increase his stake and thereby commitment while remaining invested significantly in the company’s long-term mission.

PRODUCT & SERVICES Oyo Rooms have a wide product portfolio that is updated from time to time to cater to the needs and demands of the various types of customers leading to product line stretch. It has also co-branded with various other service providers like Airtel for Wifi support, Ola for transport support, Biotique for in-room toiletries, Air Pegasus, PayPal, and Mobikwik for payments to increase its service base and for the comfort of the customers. It has multiple product lines with varying depths: – Hotel Budget Rooms Oyo Rooms partners with hotels with the aim of providing standardized services including free wi-fi and breakfast, flat-screen TVs, spotless white bed linen of a certain thread count, branded toiletries, 6-inch shower heads, a beverage tray, etc. These services are available in around 180+ cities in India and in Malaysia. Budget rooms according to their price range are divided into Standard, Premium, Elite rooms leading to the product depth of 3. – OYO Townhouse which is promoted as the neighborhood hotel is in the midscale segment targeted at millennial travelers. – OYO Home, which OYO claims is India’s maiden Home Management System that offers private homes in different locations and is fully managed by OYO. – OYO Vacation Homes identifies itself as the world’s 3rd largest vacation home brand with vacation rental management brands Belvilla, Danland, and DanCenter along with Germany-based Traum-Ferienwohnungen. – SilverKey launched in April 2018, caters to the needs of the corporate travelers undertaking business trips for a short or long duration. – Capital O offers hotel booking services. – Palette offers a perfectly curated staycation for those in search of an intuitive experience at competitive prices, an upper-end leisure resorts category. – Collection O offers to book and renting services to business travelers. – OYO LIFE, targeted at millennials and young professionals in search of fully managed homes on long-term rentals, at affordable prices.

GROWTH In its first year of operations, OYO clocked a revenue of Rs 32.86 crore and a steep loss of Rs 496.31 crore. By the end of FY 2018, its top line had scaled to Rs 415 crore while losses stood at Rs 360 crore. Year on year, OYO saw its revenues climb 245 percent while losses widened marginally from Rs 355 crore to Rs 360 crore. In its short life, OYO Hotels and Homes have been variously described as a hotel aggregator, an online travel agency (OTA), and even a Ponzi scheme with an unsustainable business model, but never a hotel chain. Today, OYO is India’s largest hotel chain with 173,000 rooms under management. It is also the world’s third-largest, with over half a million rooms over the 18,000 properties that it currently franchises and leases in 500 cities across 10 countries.

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Aparna Rawat

Aparna Rawat is a business content writer for The IndianPreneur.

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OYO IPO Case Study – Business Model & Financial Performance Explained

by Trade Brains | Oct 27, 2021 | IPO | 0 comments

OYO IPO Case Study: OYO has been no less than a revolution in the hospitality space in India. The company came as a boon to the middle-class population which struggled to get quality accommodation at a reasonable price across India. OYO brought in standardized, affordable and quality accommodation at a cheap price.

With its IPO in the pipelines the company also has created a lot of buss in the market. In this OYO IPO case study, we take a closer look at the company before the IPO. Keep reading to find out!

Table of Contents

About the Company

The brand exudes the charm and warmth of being a go-getter. The company was the first to identify the need for branding the domestic hospitality segment and offer hotel rooms within the price range of Rupee 999- Rupees 3,000. 

Before the advent of OYO, the low and mid-budget hotel segment wasn’t online and barely managed while always falling short of customers’ expectations and expected parameters. This hotel unicorn brought uniformity in a vague landscape.

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The traditional hospitality sector in India is highly divisive and fragmented. It is managed personally and often is a huge contrast from what it is sold out to be. If you pay the money you get excellent service, features and experience. If you don’t you get nothing.

OYO’s technology and a vision to bring budget hotels on board washed this segment with a plethora of changes, including being demographically fit with its user segment. At present OYO is currently valued at almost $9.6 Billion as per its latest funding rounds. This makes OYO the third largest startup in India after Byju’s & Paytm .

OYO Relationships: Rooms for Unmarried Couples

Even though live-in relationships and unmarried couples are considered to be taboo in India, it doesn’t absolve the need for couples to be intimate and spend some time together. This is why OYO walked the talk and rolled out hotels exclusively for unmarried couples at affordable rates. This concept worked well for the company and garnered a lot of appreciation & sales 

OYO IPO Case Study – A Closer Look at the Working of OYO

Ritesh Agarwal started OYO in 2013 after dropping out of college. OYO started its operation in India. OYO operates over 1,57,000 storefronts (hotels and homes) across 35 countries.

India, Malaysia, Indonesia & Europe account for more than 90% of the hotels listed on the OYO platform. OYO claims to have the second-largest loyalty program in India with 9.2 million subscribers.

The company has an employee strength of 5,130 people with more than 70% of them in India. Out of the 5,130 employees, around 4,100 employees hold stock options as per internal sources.

The OYO app has been downloaded more than 100 million times which makes it on par with AIRBNB and booking.com. This shows the popularity of the company. A few major competitors of OYO are MakeMyTrip, EaseMyTrip, bookyourown.net , etc.

OYO Business Model

OYO has changed its business model from minimum guarantee contracts/fixed payouts to a revenue-sharing model during the covid pandemic.

OYO at present charges 20-35% of the gross booking value as commission from its Hotel Partners. The company at present does not hold any of the hotels and operates in an asset-light business model.

Oyo talks about its growth philosophy which is centred in three phases.

In the first stage, the focus is on scale and presence which is followed by creating a strong brand resonance and ensuring improved gross margin. In the final stage, which is where Indian operations are, the focus is to maintain strong brand preference while ensuring a clear path to profitability, enabled by accretive growth, operational excellence, and strong gross margin.

OYO IPO Case Study – Financial Performance of OYO

The company has reported losses in every year of its operations since its inception. Between 2014 and 2019, OYO has posted a consolidated net loss of Rs 3,564.4 crore. The company has posted its highest losses during covid in the year 2020.

A large part of these losses can be attributed to the fast expansion in newer geographies and newer businesses, deep discounting, building technology and renovating the hotels. OYO has also been on an acquisition spree completing 8 acquisitions in a period of 2 years. Its reported acquisition bill for just five companies  Innov8, Danamica, @Leisure Group, Hooters, Novascotia Boutique Homes stood at USD 591 million.

OYO up to date has raised $4.1 Bn from 26 investors across 19 rounds. While OYO has not raised any larger equity round for a long time, the company has recently picked up $660 million in debt from global investors. It has also previously raised $204 million in debt from SoftBank for its Singapore subsidiary OYO Hotels (Singapore) Pte. Ltd.

As per Ritesh Agarwal, Oyo still has cash of around $800 million in the bank. The monthly burn is in the range of $4-5 million across businesses in OYO. Currently, 43% of its revenue comes from India and Southeast Asia, while 28% comes from Europe and the rest from other global markets.

The company has cut down on its operations in markets such as the US and China. Even in India, it had to trim its workforce significantly to curtail spending in light of the pandemic’s impact on the books of the company.

The company has not mentioned any timeline as to when it plans to become profitable, 

Key OYO IPO Information

OYO IPO issue size combines a fresh issue of Rs 7000 crores and an offer of sale of Rs 1,430 crores. The founder Ritesh Agarwal and his company RA Hospitality holdings have a combined stake of 33.16% stake in the company.

SoftBank Group, which is the angel investor and has been backing OYO since the nascent stage has been the largest shareholder in OYO. SoftBank has also been classified as a promoter entity as per the DHRP prospectus has a 46.62% shareholding.

Further, Dinesh Ramamurthi, trustee of Oravel Employee Welfare Trust holds a 5.40% stake in the company. The shares are actually owned by the employees of the company. Sequoia Capital India, the private equity venture also has a 3.24% stake in OYO. Airbnb, the accommodation booking website, also owns a little over 1% of OYO.

Microsoft in September 2021  has also confirmed its investment of $5 million for a minute stake in OYO. Although the stake is very small, it is a strategic deal between the two companies.

OYO might shift to Microsoft’s cloud service platform Azure after this deal. Hence the significance of this deal.

Further Ritesh Agarwal doesn’t plan to offload any of his stake in the IPO. SoftBank plans to sell a stake worth Rs 1,328.53 crore during the IPO. In 2019, Ritesh Agarwal invested $2 billion at a valuation of around $10 billion through borrowed capital, to triple his stake in the startup and take his ownership to nearly a third of the company.

The other prominent investors which include Sequoia Capital, Airbnb and others are not selling any of their respective stakes. Employees of OYO through ESOPS and stock options own up around 7% of the post issue outstanding shares.

Investment Bankers for the IPO

Kotak Investment Banking, JP Morgan Chase & co and Citigroup are the main book-runners and investment bankers for the company. The other bookrunners are ICICI Securities , Nomura Holdings, JM Financials.

The last fundraising round in OYO was done at a valuation of $9.6 billion.

OYO IPO Case Study – Purpose of the IPO

The company plans to use 29% of the IPO proceeds for repayment of the borrowings. The repayment or prepayment of debt would amount to INR 2,441 Cr. The total debts in OYO’s books are at 2848.79 cr as of FY 2020-21.

The company also plans to mobilize another INR 2900 cr towards organic & inorganic growth initiatives. The rest amount will be put to general corporate uses.

Reasons to go for the IPO

The company considers three markets as core growth- India ($26 billion), South East Asia ($56 billion) and Europe ($400 billion).

OYO’s core growth markets are highly fragmented – Organised share in these markets is less than 12%. Most hotels/homes are run by individuals (no brands), making perfect hunting grounds for aggregator platforms that can consolidate supply. Online penetration has been a major growth boost, expanding to ~30% in India (~60% globally). Online short-stay accommodation continues to gain share growing at CAGRs of 34.3% &17.9% for India and South East Asia between 2015 and 2019.

OYO has demonstrated a strong business model – 70% of traffic from direct/unpaid channels. Repeat & new organic customers generate 78% of demand. Exclusive storefronts of 157K+ (70x of the closest competitor) across hotels/homes.

Strong tech DNA with 15% of the employee base in tech roles. 40+ integrated tech solutions for end customers/hotels/homes. Additionally, Strong ROI for hotel/homeowners helps them increase revenue by 1.5x-1.9x compared to revenue at independent hotels.

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OYO IPO Case Study – Negatives for OYO

• Hotel owners across India have reported several cases pertaining to Oyo’s arbitrary cancellation and breach of contracts.Several police complaints have been filed against OYO founder Ritesh Agarwal & OYO. 
• The Federation of Hotel & Restaurant Association of India (FHRAI) has recently filed a complaint against OYO in the competition commission of India (CCI). 

OYO has mentioned the summary of the outstanding litigations against the companies and their subsidiaries in its DHRP.

As of now, OYO has around 14 criminal complaints going on against its directors

• OYO has been accused of collaborating with make my trip and gaining unfair advantage against its competition. 
• Zostel has written to SEBI to cancel the IPO of OYO in regards to its misrepresentation in its prospectus.

Zostel alleged that OYO has misrepresented the facts in its DRHP and that the upcoming IPO doesn’t include the disclosure of a 7 per cent stake of Zostel’s shareholders in OYO’s parent entity.

The issue pertains to a 2015 proposed deal of ZoRoom’s acquisition of OYO, resulting in a transfer of a 7 per cent stake of Ritesh Agarwal-led firm to ZoRooms. The deal was not implemented after a minority investor in OYO objected to the buyout.

While we can’t put OYO Rooms in the same league as traditional hotel chains, since it is an aggregator and a startup, it still needs to overcome the perception of being only for the price-sensitive customer group. It is a technology-oriented marketplace and doesn’t have to encounter the usual challenges faced by a hotel.

However, the urge to become a market power, increase valuation and stay ahead of the curve is as-is. Besides, there are several e-commerce marketplaces such as Yatra and Trivago in the hospitality segment operating on similar lines of networking. Even the traditional hotels and hospitality giants are now online, and you can book your rooms within a few clicks too. You see, technology is hardly a disruptor anymore. Services and perceptions are.

OYO’s market value and share are threatened by the likes of Airbnb, Treebo, Zo Rooms and MakeMyTrip (MMT). However, OYO has outshined the homegrown MMT on social media, whereas Airbnb still stands tall owing to the perception of being a global and veteran player in this segment. Besides, the MMT and ClearTrip model is commission-based, while OYO works as a reseller.

OYO spent over $3 billion in the last four years onboarding and retaining more hotels to its website. Technology remains the core component of this unicorn startup along with its human assets.

Hope OYO IPO Case Study has provided you with all the information you require. Comment down below and let us know if you will be applying for it.

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OYO: Creating Effective Spaces

• Format: Print
• | Language: English
• | Pages: 27

About The Authors

Das Narayandas

Sunil Gupta

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OYO: A New Global Chain of Hotels Emerges

The case discusses the rise of Indian global hotel chain OYO, originating in 2015/16 that has grown to become one of the top five hotel chains in the world in just four years. OYO’s growth illustrates the power of transformative technology on emerging markets to disrupt established industries.  OYO represents a classic case of an organization that leveraged the fragmentation in emerging markets and used its technology to bridge gaps across the value chain to offer a predictable customer experience.  It believes much of the value it created in India relies on its predictive analytics, big data analysis capabilities, and the integration of enterprise systems at variable scale allowing even the smallest operators to utilize these valuable insights to take advantage of the boom in travel.  Since its inception in India where it has thoroughly dominated the industry landscape in terms of the number of hotel rooms it controls through its franchise/lease/manchise agreements, it has expanded into other emerging market countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and China.  It has successful in these forays barring some teething troubles that are typical of global expansion.  However, as the case closes, the company had entered the developed markets of UK, Japan and the US where it has made a large acquisition of a Hooter’s hotel in Las Vegas, NV.  The expansion in to developed markets raises numerous questions regarding transportability of the OYO model from the fragmented emerging markets to the developed countries where the industry is dominated by brands.

The Growth Story of OYO: A Case Study

MARKETING MASTERMIND, Oct. 2019, IUP Publications

8 Pages Posted: 12 Feb 2020 Last revised: 28 Feb 2023

CMA(Dr.) Ashok Panigrahi

SVKM's Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS)

Date Written: October 31, 2019

The Case Study focuses on OYO, the leading online hotel booking website in India. A "Make in India" initiative, OYO currently has the highest market share of approximately 68%, generating the highest revenue among all its competitors. The case traces the origin and growth of OYO and presents a SWOT analysis of the business.

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Ashok Panigrahi (Contact Author)

Svkm's narsee monjee institute of management studies (nmims) ( email ).

Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies Mukesh Patel Technology Park Shirpur, MS 425405 India 8888810975 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://nmims.irins.org/profile/149882

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OYO – Room for Everyone – A Case Study

• Post author: admin
• Post published: March 11, 2020
• Post category: Brand Case Study
• Post comments: 0 Comments

OYO – a boon for all the couples out there who were looking for some privacy to spend time together!

Started with just one hotel in Gurgaon in 2013, to 13000+ hotels, over 450,000 rooms, adding over 64,000 rooms every month, globally.

But how did such an empire happen?

Let’s dive into another case study – OYO Rooms!

About OYO Rooms

Founded in 2013 by a college dropout Ritesh Aggarwal , OYO consisted of budget hotels.

Currently, it ranks as the world’s third-largest & the fastest growing hospitality chain of leased and franchised hotels, homes & living spaces. 

Since its advent in 2012, the startup expanded globally across hundreds of cities in India, Malaysia, UAE,  Nepal, China, the UK, Philippines, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Vietnam, the United States and more. 

The Journey

Ritesh was a student at the Indian School of Business & Finance in Delhi. At just the age of 17, he launched Oracle travels, a site for booking & listing budget-friendly hotels.

The goal was to create an Indian version of Airbnb .

Initially, it was backed by an investment of 30 lakhs from Venture Nursery.

After months of traveling, staying in several bed & breakfast accommodations, guest houses, etc, he changed Oracle to OYO in 2013.

The primary aim of OYO was the standardization of hotel rooms on the basis of a basic spotless clean bedroom, a clean bathroom, flat-screen TV, free wifi & free breakfast occasionally.

The Business Model

OYO follows a unique business model.

Basically, it neither buys a hotel nor does it aggregate it. Then how does it function?

OYO generally partners up with non-standardized hotels & blocks rooms by just buying them for a certain period. Now, these initial stages require a lot of cash & investments which is the reason it has investors like SoftBank Group , Greenoaks Capital, Sequoia India, Airbnb, and China Lodging Group.

For OYO, after they buy a hotel for say a month or two, they “standardize” it with their kits, setup, & then sell it to the customers under their brand name.

In a brief, OYO’s business model includes:

• Lease a part of Hotel’s inventory beforehand,
• Organize those hotel rooms under their brand name – Oyo Rooms
• Bookings were made through the Oyo Rooms website and mobile application.
• The target audience of OYO Rooms are:
• travelers who want a decent hotel room to stay
• Unmarried or married couples who want non-intrusive premises to spend time together.

OYO targets people from age 20-30 years, mostly from urban cities like Mumbai, Bangalore, Indore, Chennai.

They target customers from the lower-income or middle-income earning classes of society. 

OYO targets students and working professionals who enjoy traveling and making short trips, often alone.

Swot Analysis Of Oyo

For any case study, we need to understand the SWOT analysis of the business model.

SWOT Analysis is usually done to determine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities & competitions of any business.

It is the basis of future research & development of any given organization that helps them to identify their USP along with new business opportunities.

Let’s focus on the Strengths of OYO Rooms

• The standardization of the rooms under the OYO franchise is a guarantee of standard service in all the OYO rooms.
• The idea of OYO rooms is a highly innovative one with all the one-stop budget stays in India.
• The fresh idea of privacy for couples, which was bold & brave that time in India made it the forerunner of hotel chains in the country.
• OYO subsidized rooms for affordable stays that have successfully emerged in the line of new business chains.
• A huge network of around 8500+ properties throughout the country is a great strength for OYO Rooms.

In comparison to the strengths, OYO has quite a limited number of weaknesses.

Weakness of OYO Rooms

• The strategy of co-branding rooms without actually owning a property can be a problem.
• Although their standardization has worked on the favors at times their service quality and reliability can be questionable.
• The tight margins of providing hotels can be risky or which Oyo cannot do anything much to circumvent.

Opportunities of OYO Rooms

• Growing demand in the market for hotel aggregators where most higher budget hotels are suffering losses can increase the scope for aggregators like Oyo
• People are tending towards more budget-friendly, easy to book kind of stays now. Thus budget hotels that can provide decent boarding and lodging facilities are on a high demand today.
• Rise in the number of business travelers, live-in couples are increasing even in Tier-II cities. This is leading to more business opportunities of premium rooms, OYO life, OYO Townhouses, etc.

Threats of OYO Rooms

• With new entrepreneurs in the market like Goibibo , Trivago , Makemytrip , etc which offer a varied gamut of services similar to Oyo.
• Today many hotels face unsafe stays & harassments.  Although for OYO Rooms they have a moral commitment to ensure that no such untoward incidents happen.

The marketing strategies adopted by OYO

360-degree marketing:.

360-degree marketing implies that a company has a complete presence in digital as well as traditional media platforms.

OYO adopted a wide range of digital marketing strategies to promote its campaigns, including social media marketing, Google ads, & of course through its app.

One of the major campaigns of OYO is #AurKyaChahiye . This was a clever use of campaigns as on transit ad it would be a great hoarding, whereas it could be promoted on television by making effective use of TV commercials.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO

Search Engine Marketing refers to the use of particular keywords to ensure a high level of traffic & visibility on your page.

OYO used SEO to its full potential!

Some of the most popular keywords for OYO are “Oyo Rooms”, “hotels in Shimla”, “Oyo Rooms Delhi”, “hotels in Mysore”, “Hotels in Nainital” and “Hotels in Ooty”. 

So basically if you go on Google and type these words, OYO’s result will the top one to appear in the zero position.

Also, OYO used brands to bid on certain search terms to ensure that when users search these particular terms on the internet, the particular brand’s page pops up as one of the first results.

For OYO some of these words include, online hotel booking, hotel booking online, hotel booking offers, book hotels, best hotel deals, book hotels online, hotel deals, hotel room, best hotels, best hotel prices and hotels nearby.

These bid words made their website much more accessible for people looking for affordable hotels.

Social media marketing

OYO segmented social media platforms in order to promote their brand.

For Facebook, the brand used location-based posts, posts that detail the progress of the organization over the years and regular promotional posts.

These three types of posts with unique content catered to each of the targeted segment the brand was going after.

The location-based posts helped potential customers to find accommodations for their destinations. The progress posts helped to generate audience engagement & the regular promotional posts helped to retain the brand awareness encouraging people to book OYO rooms instead of other brands.

Now comes Instagram.

The brand used almost a similar strategy for Instagram as it used for Facebook. But here they reposted pictures taken by travelers, happy OYO users. They encouraged users to tag OYO in their posts, increasing engagement. They also regularly post-festive posts and special discounts on their page to keep the audience updated.

With Pinterest, they did campaign-related posts along with Twitter. They posted about the various award wins and events, as well as any corporate social responsibility related work that OYO carries out. 

Contests & Campaigns

Apart from the famous  #AurKyaChahiye campaign which highlighted the fact that OYO provides rooms at just Rs. 999, the brand always keeps their customers engaged.

There was a contest #OYOnauts in which the social media followers submitted their story ad & if they win they would get a sponsored trip from OYO itself! This campaign was short but was a major hit instantly.

Another campaign  #OneForEveryone by the brand was a video campaign that showed 8 different types of peoploe OYO catering to.

Apart from this, OYO regularly offers discounts for the customers on special weeks like Valentine’s Day & Diwali, so on.

Influencer Campaigning

OYO collaborated with influencers like Prajakta Koli (MostlySane), Mumbaiker Nikhil , and others to promote the brand.

For example, a biking influencer could show that the new OYO hotel is biker-friendly through staying there and reviewing his experience on his social media. Or someone posting about the safety of women travelers in OYO rooms.

They even produce blogs regularly to boost their content marketing. This gave a great boost to OYO as a brand.

The Results

With such aggressive digital marketing, OYO achieved a fanbase of its own.

It has a strong social media presence on Facebook with over 1.1 million fans and a Twitter following of over 57,000 followers. 

The app has over 10 million-plus app downloads with a good number of active users.

Their major campaign videos on YouTube garnered over 175 million views to the brand.

Some of their recent endeavors are Salute to the heroes of the 1965 war and Oyo Explorer – Pune.

Partnerships

OYO has huge backups from brands like Airtel for wi-fi support, ZO rooms , Thomas Cook , Air Pegasus and Tourism and Hospitality Skill councils with the investors from all over the world.

In the last year 2018, OYO Hotels & Homes completed its transition to becoming a 100% leased & franchised hotel chain. 

Currently, the brand operates across more than 290 cities with 320,000 exclusive rooms and 7,000-plus buildings. In India, it has over 8,700 leased and franchised buildings and over 173,000 rooms across 259 cities.

With OYO Rooms, the company is tapping into a market of growing travelers.

They are launching new conveniences like OYO Homes and Studio Stays by OYO.

With OYO Homes the company is venturing into travelers who prefer to stay in bed & breakfast rather than hotels. These stays will offer them local cuisines, homemade food.

With OYO Studios & OYO Life, the company is venturing into another growing segment of students who travel for internships, college admissions, and entrance tests; as well as first jobbers who need a decent place to stay while they look for homes to rent or buy in a new city.

Ritesh Agarwal, founder, and CEO, OYO Rooms told BusinessLine, “We are also looking to offer niche experiences to specific customer segments such as students who are on internships and working professionals moving to a new city, with Studio Stays, which are priced upwards of Rs. 7,999 per month.

“We launched this in summer and saw a flood of guests in the North-East, Bengaluru, Kochi, and Delhi.”

Recently, they launched  OYO café, OYO We for Women travelerS and OYO Premium for high-end customers!

Along with expanding its business globally, OYO understands the importance of customer’s feedback & its effect on its brand image.

OYO has made a mark in the hotel chain globally.

How are you planning to expand your business globally? Thinking of using the leverage of digital marketing? Contact Skyram Technologies and let us help you to build your franchise!

And for our other blogs, read here !

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Oyo success story | case study | business model | facts & more.

OYO is a hotel chain and hospitality company based in India. It was founded in 2013 and has since grown to become one of the largest hotel chains in the world, with properties in various countries around the globe. OYO offers budget-friendly accommodation options, including hotels, resorts, and vacation homes. The company is known for its technology-driven approach to hospitality, which includes a mobile app that allows customers to book and manage their stays.

Challenges faced by OYO Rooms

Despite these challenges, OYO has continued to expand and grow, and remains a major player in the hospitality industry.

How Does Oyo Scaled It’s Business

OYO has scaled its business through a combination of aggressive expansion and the use of technology. The company has pursued a strategy of rapid expansion, opening new properties and entering new markets at a rapid pace. This has allowed OYO to build a large and diverse portfolio of properties and establish a strong presence in many different countries.

In addition to its expansion efforts, OYO has also relied heavily on technology to drive its growth. The company has developed a proprietary technology platform that powers its operations and enables it to efficiently manage its properties. This platform includes a mobile app that allows customers to book and manage their stays, as well as tools for property owners to manage their properties and for OYO to manage its inventory and pricing.

The Man Behind OYO

OYO was founded by Ritesh Agarwal, who is currently the CEO of the company. Agarwal is an Indian entrepreneur who founded OYO in 2013 when he was just 19 years old. Prior to starting OYO, Agarwal had already made a name for himself as a successful entrepreneur, having founded several other companies including a web design firm and a business consulting firm.

Agarwal came up with the idea for OYO while traveling in India and experiencing firsthand the challenges of finding reliable, affordable accommodation. He saw an opportunity to use technology to improve the hospitality industry, and set out to create a company that could provide budget-friendly accommodation options to travelers.

Under Agarwal’s leadership, OYO has grown to become one of the largest hotel chains in the world, with properties in numerous countries around the globe. Agarwal has been recognized for his entrepreneurial achievements and was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2015.

The Story Behind OYO

OYO is a hotel chain and hospitality company that was founded in 2013 by Ritesh Agarwal, a young Indian entrepreneur. The company was created with the goal of using technology to improve the hospitality industry and provide budget-friendly accommodation options to travelers.

Agarwal came up with the idea for OYO while traveling in India and experiencing firsthand the difficulties of finding reliable, affordable accommodation. He saw an opportunity to use technology to streamline the process of booking and managing hotel stays, and set out to create a company that could offer this service to travelers.

Since its founding, OYO has experienced rapid growth and has become one of the largest hotel chains in the world, with properties in various countries around the globe. The company is known for its technology-driven approach to hospitality, which includes a mobile app that allows customers to book and manage their stays, as well as tools for property owners to manage their properties and for OYO to manage its inventory and pricing.

Business and Revenue Model

OYO’s business model is based on providing budget-friendly accommodation options to travelers. The company operates a network of hotels, resorts, and vacation homes, and works with property owners to manage these properties on behalf of OYO.

OYO makes money by charging customers for their stays at its properties. The company uses a technology platform to manage its inventory and pricing, and adjusts its rates based on demand and other factors. OYO also generates revenue through partnerships with companies such as airlines, travel agents, and online travel agencies, which provide it with a commission for bookings made through these channels.

In addition to revenue from accommodation bookings, OYO also generates income from other sources such as food and beverage sales at its properties, and through the sale of ancillary products and services such as airport transfers and tour packages.

Funding and Investors

Acquisitions and Investments

Growth and Revenue

OYO has experienced rapid growth since its founding in 2013. The company has grown to become one of the largest hotel chains in the world, with properties in various countries around the globe. OYO has achieved this growth through a combination of aggressive expansion and the use of technology to streamline its operations and improve its efficiency.

As a private company, OYO does not disclose its financial performance in detail. However, the company has faced financial challenges in the past, including high levels of debt and a need to raise additional capital. It has also struggled to turn a profit, with some reports suggesting that the company has had losses in recent years. Despite these challenges, OYO has continued to expand and grow, and remains a major player in the hospitality industry.

OYO Competitors

• Marriott International: Marriott is a global hotel chain with a large portfolio of properties in various countries around the world.
• Hilton: Hilton is a global hotel chain with a wide range of properties including luxury hotels, resorts, and extended stay brands.
• InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG): IHG is a global hotel company with a portfolio of brands that includes Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, and others.
• Accor: Accor is a French hotel company with a global presence, known for its luxury and budget brands including Sofitel, Novotel, and Ibis.
• AirBnB: AirBnB is a vacation rental platform that allows people to rent out their homes or other properties to travelers. While not a traditional hotel chain, AirBnB is a major player in the hospitality industry and competes with companies like OYO.

These are just a few examples of the many companies that compete with OYO in the hospitality industry.

Interesting Facts About OYO

• OYO was founded by Ritesh Agarwal, a young Indian entrepreneur, in 2013 when he was just 19 years old.
• The company was created with the goal of using technology to improve the hospitality industry and provide budget-friendly accommodation options to travelers.
• OYO has experienced rapid growth since its founding and is now one of the largest hotel chains in the world, with properties in various countries around the globe.
• The company is known for its technology-driven approach to hospitality, which includes a mobile app that allows customers to book and manage their stays, as well as tools for property owners to manage their properties and for OYO to manage its inventory and pricing.
• OYO has made several acquisitions and investments over the years as part of its expansion strategy, including the acquisition of Leisure Pass Group, @Leisure Group, and Hooters Casino Hotel.
• Despite its success, OYO has faced a number of challenges in its history, including competition, quality control issues, legal issues, and management challenges.

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The Success Story of OYO

• Ritesh Pathak
• Mar 09, 2021
• Updated on: Dec 07, 2021

You can hardly find a person in today's world who does not know about OYO . Such has been the expansion and influence of this hospitality company. 

The growth of OYO Hotels & Homes has been phenomenal. From starting out in April 2013 to becoming the world’s third-largest and fastest-growing chain of leased and franchised hotels, homes & living spaces, OYO  has come a long way. 

For those who don’t know, OYO stands for ‘On Your Own’ . The platform has now become a synonym for budget-friendly rooms. People know it for its affordable accommodation services. The company has kept on adding feathers to its cap ever since it came into the market.

Its founder Ritesh Agarwal has achieved the feat of being the World’s Youngest Self-made Billionaire after Kylie Jenner in February 2020. Amid all this success, the company had to face many challenges as well.

We all know the success the company has got but very few people know the whole story behind OYO. How was it started? How does it extend its services? What is the business model of OYO?

Through this blog, we have tried to answer all these questions.  

The Story behind OYO

Ritesh Agarwal, a college drop-out, always had the intention to start something of his own. At the mere age of 17 years, in 2011, he came up with the idea of Oravel stays which was later re-launched in 2013 as, what we know today, OYO Hotels & Homes. 

There are some stories behind the setup of this platform, starting with the early life of Ritesh Agarwal. 

The Journey of Ritesh Agarwal

Ritesh Agarwal was born in Rayagada, Orissa. He went to the Sacred Heart School in Rayagada. Right from his school days, Ritesh was inclined towards computers, software and coding.

In 2009, Ritesh left for Kota with an intention to get an entry in top IIT colleges. Later, he realized Kota wasn’t a place to learn coding and hence gave up on his coding dream. He was left with a lot of spare time, so he started working on a book: ‘Indian Engineering Colleges: A Complete Encyclopaedia of Top 100 Engineering Colleges’ . This was a hit.  

At the age of 16, he was among the 240 students who were selected for the Asian Science Camp held at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai.

Ritesh Agarwal was among 20 students under the age of 20 years who received the Thiel Fellowship. He received a sum of $100,000 over two years as well as guidance and resources to drop out of college and create a start-up. 

Since Ritesh used to travel a lot, amid his trips, he stayed in different hotels. This gave him a realization about the poor hospitality facilities he got at different places. 

This motivated him to create an accommodation system where people can get the best rooms, food, staff, and other services in a given budget. He created Oravel Stays in 2011, an aggregator of breakfast and bed stays, inspired by Airbnb’s model. 

“Leaders shouldn’t just build and accumulate wealth but give back to society.” - Ritesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO, OYO Hotels & Homes

In 2013, Oravel Stays was relaunched as OYO Hotels & Homes  to create India’s largest chain of affordable, standardized hotels. 

Also, Read - How OYO Uses Technology

About OYO’s success

OYO did not become a success overnight. It also had to go through some sequence of events and rough phases. The company’s business was also impacted by the COVID outbreak. 

After starting in 2013, OYO went on to acquire rooms in hotels across the country and transformed them into OYO. The company’s sole aim was to make accommodation good and affordable for its people. 

OYO has continuously grown after 2013. It first started its services in India, and today, after 8 years of establishment, it operates in 800 cities in more than 80 countries of the world . 

The company started its international operations in 2018 starting with Malaysia. It then entered into the markets of the UK, UAE, Dubai, China, Singapore, Indonesia, and others.

In 2018 , the company became a 100% leased & franchised hotel chain. It recorded global stayed room nights of 75 million in 2018, almost six times more than in 2017, and collected a revenue of $211 million . In 2017, 2016, and 2015 it recorded global stayed room nights of 13m, 6m, and 4m respectively.  

I n 2019 , OYO generated a revenue of $951 million and witnessed an increase of 740 million dollars , 4.5 times more than 2018. 

As of now, it has acquired more than one million rooms in over 43 thousand hotels. Through its vacation homes business, the company offers travellers and city dwellers access to over 130,000 homes around the world.  

OYO now operates under the name ‘OYO Hotels & Homes’.

Timeline of OYO’s Journey

OYO was also surrounded by some crises and controversies that made headlines. The company was accused of cheating and fraud. Some suspect incidents also took place in some of the OYO. 

In 2019, a Bengaluru hotelier filed a cheating case against Ritesh Agarwal and six others claiming that they had not paid him his dues. According to the complaint, he claimed that OYO was supposed to pay him ₹7 lakh a month but they have failed to do so. However, OYO rejected any such allegations.  

The hospitality company was also alleged for fraud . Hotel owners had raised a point that the company charges a franchise fee of 20% on room revenues, it ultimately takes more money through different sources that aren’t disclosed initially.

In the same year, a national-level shooter was found dead in an OYO hotel reportedly due to electrocution. In 2018, an OYO hotel employee in Gurgaon was accused of raping a woman when her husband was away. In both cases, OYO said it was coping with authorities and helping in the investigations.

Impact of COVID on OYO

Like all the businesses, OYO being a hospitality company was also hit severely by the outbreak of coronavirus. Ritesh Agarwal in his address to OYOpreneurs said that the revenue and occupancy went down by over 50-60% in April 2020.

He also pointed out in the video that its global partners incurred a loss and the revenue went down by 75% . As a result, its employees had to go through a pay cut by 25% .  

Hear what else he had to say through this video.  

OYO Funding 

Since OYO was started by a young boy, merely seventeen years of age, it required funds to grow its business. Ritesh’s idea made a great impact on investors and has attracted so many of them over the years.

After receiving a grant of $100,000 under the Thiel Fellowship, OYO in 2014 raised Rs 4 Crore from LightSpeed Venture Partners (LSVP) and DSG Consumer Partners at a pre-money valuation. 

In March 2015, OYO received funding of $25 million from its investors namely Lightspeed India, Sequoia, and others. The same year in July, OYO received a whopping amount of $100 million in a Series C round of funding from the most prominent and powerful investor in the world, Japanese investor SoftBank . 

In September 2018 OYO got itself listed in the list of unicorn companies after it raised $800 million from SoftBank.

In 2019, OYO raised a total of $807 million from Ritesh Agarwal-led RA Hospitality Holdings and SoftBank in series F funding. Apart from this, OYO bagged funds from Airbnb and Didi. 

OYO’s latest funding has come from Microsoft  in July 2021. The firm invested   $5 Million .

Also, Read   Top 12 Successful Startups in India

OYO meeting consumer needs across segments

Hospitality.

After victoriously conquering the budget hospitality space through their first brand OYO Rooms, OYO Hotels & Homes presently holds a multi-brand approach, through well defined offerings addressed towards the varying requirements of the travellers in today’s world. 

The platform combined its hotel brands (OYO’s Townhouse, Collection O, SilverKey), OYO LIFE (student housing and co-living), OYO Workspaces as well as OYO Home businesses into Frontier businesses.

OYO Townhouse

The category of OYO Townhouse has been positioned by the platform as a friendly neighborhood hotel aimed at millennial travellers aspiring premium economy accommodations.

Silvery Key 

Launched in April 2018, Silvery Key is OYO’s executive stay offering and the primary destination for all business travellers in India providing high-class services. 

It attends to the requirements of the corporate travellers heading on business trips for a short or long duration.

SilverKey provides furnished accommodation to corporates for their personnel stay. Established at the core of business hubs and accompanied by spacious rooms, upscale interiors, meals, and dining areas, it attends to all the needs of business travellers. 

Collection O

Being OYO’s mid-scale business hotel, Collection O attends to new-age corporate travellers who are on the lookout for affordable and quality accommodations while keeping pace with their personal and professional needs. 

Collection O provides larger and spacious rooms having facilities like premium furnishing and linen, on-request laundry, unlimited breakfast, 24X7 in-room dining, high-speed WiFi, workstations for each room, and OYO-trained customer services. 

Capital O proves to be the best suitable offering for new-age travellers having the facilities which they search for in terms of business & leisure accommodation. Located in key locations, these premium hotels are specially developed to offer OYO’s quality-assured experience at affordable prices.

OYO Homes is one of the top rental vacation homes business in India

OYO Weddingz.in

India’s Largest Wedding Company, Weddingz.in, provides a hassle-free Wedding experience

Weddingz.in offers customers a fully managed, one-stop platform for all their needs to organize a superlative wedding experience including providing beautiful and spacious venues, managing themed decor, end to end catering, in-house photographers and makeup artists guided by a dedicated wedding planner, all at guaranteed best prices

Keeping the satisfaction of the consumers at the heart of their operations, Weddingz.in is on a mission of providing an exceptional event having 100% customer satisfaction and quality services

With a combined organic following of over 2 million on social media, Weddingz.in enjoys the highest engagement for wedding-related content in the industry

OYO LIFE provides long-term rented accommodation furnished with amenities at affordable prices. OYO Life is targeted at millennials and young professionals who need managed homes on long-term rent. Under this category, OYO offers tech first, comfortably furnished stays with amenities such as wifi, housekeeping, power backup, and community kitchens with a strong assurance of safety and hygiene

OYO WORKSPACES

Established in July 2019 , OYO Workspaces debuted its multi-brand approach to the managed workspaces opportunity in India (a first for the market) with two organic co-working brands- Powerstation and Workflo, alongside acquiring Innov8 and providing ergonomically designed workspaces befitting for every pocket. 

Recommended Read The Success Story of boAt

OYO Business and Revenue Model

Stepping out into the world in 2013 , the young hotel startup, OYO Hotels & Homes, is now the world’s leading chain of Hotels & Homes, having a presence across 800 cities and 80 countries across the world. The company operates an asset-light chain of predictable, easy to book, low-cost accommodations globally and also allows its 43,000+ hotels and 150,000 vacation homes to gain from the rise in occupancy, and hence revenue.

On a global scale, OYO has started out as a leading vacation home rental platform, offering beautiful homes across Europe through its brands Belvilla, Dancenter, and Traum Feirenwohnugen. The company recently acquired TUI Ferienhaus from e-domizil GmbH that has helped OYO in becoming the second-largest global vacation home business by the number of homes.

The focus of the platform is serving its customers with dependable, sanitised, value-oriented stay experiences, which is done by simplifying booking and offering a large range of hotel options for their customers to select from in the same neighborhood, at a price that is in pace with their budget. 

In the case of asset partners, OYO offers its proprietary technology and tech-driven solutions to guarantee hassle-free operations on the ground. It provides end-to-end revenue ownership, that includes pricing, third-party distribution, and higher revenue for partners via its direct channels while also eliminating day-to-day operational hassles. 

When it comes from the perspective of the company’s employees, OYO is a workplace that allows thousands of talented professionals the opportunity for achieving their full potential. There’s never a dull day for OYOpreneurs. From solving complex issues and enjoying the opportunity of collaborating with the best global talent, they can in turn seek to make their own mark. 

The platform is backed by key investors, who include SoftBank Vision Fund, Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Ventures, Hero Enterprise, and China Lodging Group, and some others.

The company plans to raise Rs 8,430 cr or $1.2 bn through the public listing in early 2022. The offer comprises fresh issuance of up to Rs. 7,000 cr or $966 million and an offer for sale aggregating up to Rs 1,430 cr or $197 million.

OYO Awards and Accolades

Business World Young Entrepreneur Award (2015)

Digital Champion of the Year at Brand Excellence Awards (2015)

Star Youth Achiever Award at 8th YOUTH MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA FORUM (2016)

NDTV Dream Chaser of the Year (2016)

Forbes 30 under 30 - Consumer Tech (2016) (Global, India, Asia)

Fortune 40 under 40 (2016) 1

The Economic Times 40 under 40 (2016)

Asian Centre’s New Age Entrepreneur Award (2017)

Gaurav Samman by The Government of Haryana (2017)

GQ India - 50 Most Influential Young Leaders (2016, 2017)

Real Innovation Awards by London Business School - If you don’t succeed at first category (2017)

Best Entrepreneur of 2018 by International Hospitality Council (IHC) (2018) 3

StartAP Entrepreneur of the Year Award (2018)

Forbes India Tycoons of Tomorrow (2018)

Dataquest IT Person of the Year (2018)

CNBC’s Young Turk of the Year (2019)

The Open Republic Achievers Awards - Business New Age category (2019)

BTVi National Awards for Marketing Excellence: Young Achiever of the year (2019) - Ritesh Agarwal

BTVi National Awards for Marketing Excellence: CEO of the year (2019) -Ritesh Agarwal

Ritesh Agarwal, Founder & Group CEO, OYO Hotels & Homes won 'The Millennial Maverick' Award at GQ & Mercedes-Benz Restless for Tomorrow Awards (2020)

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Latest Comments

But as we know sustainability is difficult to achieve. I have done quite a few bookings from 2013 to 2017 but recently I have visited such properties where basic amenities were also not available. He has done a good job with startup but the essence was on your own is long gone. I have visited such oyo's that I had to relocate after seeing pathetic condition. For now u construct a building and rent on oyo rest hospitality is gone.

Now to get a clean room you have to pay atleast 2k no less than that . I mean good with inflation but hotels with lesser price mark on website must be removed from their website . Also if oyo really cares let them add a " photos by guests " column . Everyone will see but they don't have guts to do it

we really like the posts that you made. https://dealerpro.net/

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Case Study: How OYO drove Brand Awareness amidst family travellers through storytelling campaign

This Case Study explores what went behind the scenes of the OYO campaign with multiple videos featuring Kalki Koechlin, Kunal Kapoor, and the infamous 'Assi Reach Gaye' kid. For each video, the brand created a dedicated media plan - focused on driving views among relevant audience.

The Case Study of the OYO campaign includes insights into conceptualization and execution, along with statistics on the results garnered.

Category Introduction

As of 2019, it is estimated that there were on an average 54 million short-stay storefronts globally. Out of these, only ~10% of storefronts are organized under traditional brands. From 2015 to 2019, the total short-stay accommodation market grew at 7.5% CAGR to reach around 1.3 Tn USD in 2019. While the industry dipped in 2020 due to COVID-19 restrictions, it is projected to revive back and reach US$ 1.1 trillion in 2021. Going forward, the industry is projected to grow at 6.6% CAGR from 2021 to 2030 to reach US$ 1.9 trillion in 2030.

Brand Introduction

OYO is a technology platform in the hospitality ecosystem, on a mission to build technology products and revenue management services of choice for hotel and home entrepreneurs. These Patrons (hotel and homeowners) then help provide accommodation of choice to our guests around the world.

The OYO Customer App is the third most downloaded travel mobile app globally with and most downloaded in Asia, in 2020 (as per Sensor Tower). The objective of social media has been to drive consideration amongst premium and family travelers by amplifying the renewed brand positioning. 

OYO recently launched a multi-film campaign that featured several actors such as Gul Panag, Kalki Koechlin, Chitrangada Singh, and Kunal Kapoor, who brought to life the many day-to-day stories of travelers. Over the pandemic, travelers not just in India but across the world have adapted and evolved their travel habits and preferences. Travelers now place higher trust and confidence in brands that provide flexibility and personalization.

With this insight at the heart of its campaign, OYO aimed to spread awareness about the key features on the OYO App such as ‘nearby stays’, ‘easy cancellation’, and ‘search the view’ through campaign films across all OTT platforms, TV and Social media.

Problem Statement/Objective

OYO is trying to expand its audience and remain top of mind when customers plan to travel again by driving consideration and changing/creating a perception about the brand that OYO has evolved into. The brand has been in Indian the market for nine years and has built a budget-friendly reputation and is widely associated with young people and the SMB sales force, the core cohorts that drive business.

Until 2019, it focussed on a 'property' centered narrative; showcasing the room/hotel and amenities played a prominent part in the communication. While the brand is ubiquitous and the awareness levels are high, they do fall in the consideration set of families, leisure trips, and premium travelers.

The campaign was undertaken by OYO’s Global Brand team. The team was given the following consideration to keep while developing the campaign

Position OYO for evolved travellers and city dwellers

OYO is a global brand, which believes that everyone should evolve in their life. In relationships, in careers, in peace of mind, in time well spent. The narrative developed had to reflect our global positioning and the evolution of OYO’s customers, Patrons (our hotel/homeowner partners), and the evolution of OYO into the global tech-hospitality brand.

Create the correct association about OYO

Across our customer calls last year, OYO realised how little the audience knew about the brand. So the customer calls guided to inform people about the OYO they must know. But, unfortunately, even what they knew about the brand was either incorrect or highly polluted.

The brand made a conscious shift to position OYO as a tech-forward, aspirational, premium brand that appeals to various sections of society.  

This finding meant the OYO app had to be kept at the core of the campaign.

• An app that enables you to find an OYO right next door, wherever you may be. It also showcases the ubiquity of the brand
• An app that enables you to change plans and live flexibly. Reflecting the demands of travellers today, given unpredictability in the new normal
• An app that enables you to search for quality choices easily

The brand wanted to use this opportunity to expand the audience and remain top of mind when customers plan to travel again; From the start, it was clear that the campaign must help widen the pool that currently considers OYO to drive higher demand and supply. In India, this segment was identified as the family and premium segment of customers, which must add to the current OYO customer funnel. 

Also Read: OYO YouTube Strategy: Mayur Hola on nurturing campaigns, sentiments & consumer relations

Creative idea.

OYO has distinct use cases of people taking a pitstop, studying, spending the night after a party, or just staying back at an OYO after a late night at work. So, with this idea, the brand talked about the various audiences who own it already and reach out to even further audiences, in terms of families.

OYO makes things easy and simple which ties the different real-life stories of today’s evolved, Indian travelers - To bring the idea to life and reflect on the consideration that was set out, the brand did the following:

• The cast. A set of recognized actors with purposeful, powerful women leading the way. And as cute as a button, restless boy. Explicitly picked to reflect the brand positioning and add virality to the stories
• Gorgeous settings and aspirational elements were picked. Golf courses, lakes, upscale SUVs. Styling and imagery that reflects OYO’s global presence
• Product at the heart of storytelling. The brand was selling the App and not a specific property. It amplified features visually to drive love and attention towards the tech that enables our customers to step out without a second thought every single day. 
• The film's original score integrates OYO in a quirky, contemporary way

Today, consumers follow specific content, series, or Live events. Therefore, OYO did not just play the usual reach and frequency game but instead focused on marquee media properties: 

• Ensuring high reach by being present on top Live sporting events; The brand released all 3 films during the India Vs South Africa ODI’s and India Vs West Indies, but only the “Kalki & Golf’ film during the Australian Open - Ladies and Men’s finals. The intent is to customize programming as per the audience.
• Ensuring high relatability with marquee media property choices, OYO aired the ‘Kalki’ and ‘Golf’ films during shows like Shark Tank & Kapil Sharma but only ‘Assi Reach Gaye” during family-oriented shows like Tarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah
• Ensuring the corporate and investor community take notice by capitalizing on national topics such as government televised conferences (India's Federal Budget announcement for fiscal 2022).

Social media was used to drive reach and virality to the campaign by:

• Pre-identified critical elements from the stories that can drive stickiness and narrative; The cute kid and the phrase 'Assi Reach Gaye’ (are we there yet?) the actor and expression in 'Kalki' and the outfit from the 'Golf' film - these moments were highlighted through short form content.
• Created an amplification plan for each story; Like the custom made media plan, each film was launched and amplified separately starting 19th January with "Assi Reach Gaye", followed by Kalki film on 23rd January and finally Golf on 28th January.
• Sustained campaign on social media. Over and above the strategic placements, OYO ensured that it hyped the stories via social handles to drive up organic chatter. ⦁ The incorrigible Kukki (the restless kid from the film) took over the OYO Twitter handle on 21st Jan and immediately got spoken about. ⦁ OYO made its own emojis - the Assi Reach Gaye and the Kalkimoji packs ⦁ Brand Banter with new-age companies such as Uber, Urban Company, Gaana, Swiggy, Boat, and Flipkart was executed
• CGO’s LinkedIn profile was made and immediately got flooded by connections. So, much so that LinkedIn had to pause ‘new connections’ for this profile.

- Quantitative

• Trended at #1 on Twitter with #KalkiKalDekhenge and #2 with #AssiReachGaye and #LooksGoodOnYou with over 15000+ tweets.
• Kukki Twitter Takeover: In less than 5 hours the brand added 700 followers, had 40K profile visits, 675K impressions and 50K+ engaged users
• Correct pronunciation of 'Kalki' was saved by over 1000+ users and was shared over 6000+ times.
• 300+ Memes, a comic book and a music video were created organically (UGC), some of them landed on the front page of a national daily

-Positive Buzz around the brand was at its highest in the last 2 years during the campaign period according to YouGov Brand Index 

- Qualitative

The brand trended on Twitter every day it released the film on social media. #1 with #KalkiKalDekhenge and #2 with #AssiReachGaye and #LooksGoodOnYou. Comic strips, memes and content creators picked up on the campaign and added their own spin to it. 

Mayur Hola , Head of Global Brand, OYO

We realized we have several use cases right from travelers who take road trips and may need to make a pit stop on the way since it’s too dark to drive out, or a couple who needed to check into a room but really, they're going in there to squabble because they can’t scream at each other at home. With an OYO virtually around every corner of India, we have unique use cases of people studying, spending the night after a party, or just staying back at an OYO after a late night at work. So, with this campaign, we're trying to talk about the various audiences who own us already, and reach out to even further audiences, in terms of families and so on. In one way, it is reflective of usage already and in another way, we want to add more to that pool. The OYO App is the hero here and we tie it all together with different real-life stories of today’s evolved Indian travellers. That’s one of the reasons why these films connected so well with our audiences.”

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OYO Hotels: Providing the rich location details customers need to book a great stay, every time

About OYO Hotels & Homes

OYO Hotels & Homes is a hospitality chain on a mission to provide quality living spaces at affordable prices across the 80 countries it serves. It leverages technology to help small-scale hoteliers achieve growth.

Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.

About Lepton Software

Lepton Software is a Google Cloud Premier Partner focused on location analytics, map data, and geospatial consulting. It has offices in India, the Middle East, and Singapore.

OYO Hotels increases bookings and improves user experience on its platform by providing reliable and comprehensive location information through Google Maps Platform.

• Improves hotel booking experience with clustering abilities of Google Maps Platform
• Enables customers to easily locate places of interest
• Displays accurate directions from hotels to places of interest

Helps to increase overall hotel bookings by 50%

Did you know that the average person visits 38 websites when searching for the best hotel? With so many factors to consider, from location to amenities, convenience, and cost, it can be challenging for travelers to find the right place for their needs.

“Millions of people around the world have to compromise on either location, quality, or price when booking accommodation, and many times this is because they haven’t been given enough information on their options,” says Anil Goel, Group Chief Technology and Product Officer at OYO Hotels. “Our aim is to address this problem by building a comprehensive booking platform that helps our customers make more informed decisions.”

Founded in 2013, OYO Hotels goes beyond the typical hotel stay booking platform, taking ownership of the accommodation experience itself. It works with hotel owners around the world to provide quality yet affordable living spaces and promote them to visitors looking for recommendations on its platform. The company realized that in order to drive more bookings in its hotels around the world, it needed to further dial up the strengths of its listings. To provide more detailed information on each hotel, OYO Hotels worked with partner agency Lepton Software to integrate key APIs and features from Google Maps Platform .

Filters and clusters help travelers to zero in on their ideal hotel

With so many options available on the OYO Hotels platform, the company needed to cluster its hotels in a way that was easier for visitors to navigate. "With Google Maps Platform, we were able to efficiently deliver a visual display of closely clustered hotels in a zoomed-out view. Previously, we might have 50 hotels across a large area, but because a visitor has zoomed out so much, it would look like there are 50 hotels in one particular spot. Now with Google Maps, visitors see just one hotel icon with the number ‘50’ next to it, indicating the number of similar buildings. This helps reduce the visual load for visitors, and makes the page look more presentable," Anil explains.

"Thanks to the inbuilt functionality of Google Maps Platform to filter and cluster items easily, we were able to sort out our listings in just a matter of days. It’s a task that would previously have taken us a few months to complete.”

Beyond delivering a clear visual display of hotels and places of interest, Google Maps Platform also enables OYO Hotels to let customers filter their search against a wide range of criteria. From price to location, facilities, accessibility, and payment options, customers are only shown hotels which meet the criteria that matters most to them, helping to narrow their search. "Thanks to the inbuilt functionality of Google Maps Platform to filter and cluster items easily, we were able to sort out our listings in just a matter of days. It’s a task that would previously have taken us a few months to complete," says Anil.

Taking the platform to the next level with Google Cloud

Beyond Google Maps Platform, the OYO Hotels team is also taking advantage of Google Cloud products to enhance its customer experience by integrating more recommendations in its listings. It uses BigQuery to gain a deeper understanding of what customers want, and Firebase to improve the speed and seamlessness between its mobile and web applications. OYO Hotels also uses Google Analytics 360 to analyze and visualize data from its customers so that it can deliver a smoother experience for visitors. "We use Analytics 360 to make sure our user journey is helping customers move through the website to complete their booking. It also enables us to identify areas for improvement, and create actionable items to avoid drop-offs along the way,” says Anil. “The key areas we look at include the homepage, listing pages, logins, and bookings. Custom reports also help to give us a quick overview of each area’s performance. He adds that the team uses custom dimensions to segment its users so that it can understand how different people respond to the website.

"The ability of Google Cloud products to deliver insights on how people are using our platform, and what they want from it, is extremely useful for helping us to enhance the customer experience. This, together with the rich location data that Google Maps Platform provides, has been the recipe to our success thus far," says Anil.

Working with a partner that understands the business, and the platform

While it’s important to have the right tools for success, understanding how to use them is just as crucial. "The Google Maps Platform team holds quarterly meetings with us to understand our challenges so it can introduce new solutions that are likely to meet our business needs,” shares Anil. “This really helps our product and tech teams as we work toward improving our service offerings.”

He adds that having a partner like Lepton Software that understands Google Maps Platform like the back of its hand further helps with matching the right products to what OYO Hotels wants to achieve. "In the past few months, Lepton Software has helped us analyze and transform a few of our business objectives to the Google Maps Platform products that meet them. The team has been very helpful in monitoring our usage and suggesting the right way forward for us."

"The Google Maps Platform team holds quarterly meetings with us to understand our challenges so it can introduce new solutions that are likely to meet our business needs. This really helps our product and tech teams as we work toward improving our service offerings."

As OYO Hotels continues to grow, it wants to present itself as more than just a hotel provider, but a hospitality partner that journeys alongside its customers at every stage of their lives. "We’re quickly moving to becoming a place where memories are made, by providing the perfect wedding venue, or honeymoon experience," says Anil. To help propel the business deeper into this next stage, OYO Hotels has increased its focus on personalization: recommending accommodation based on customers’ search history and the past preferences of customers with similar profiles, as well as using localization to further enhance the places of interest shown. "We’re already using image recognition to assign quality scores to hotel images, which improves the quality of a hotel’s details page. We’ve seen some great results from using Google Maps Platform, so the plan is to keep using Google Cloud solutions to take our business to greater heights."

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OYO Boosts Push Notification Delivery by 44% Using MoEngage

Opening its doors in 2013, OYO Hotels and Homes, a young hotel startup, today is the world’s leading chain of hotels and homes. OYO today operates in over 800 cities in 80 countries, including the U.S., Europe, U.K., India, Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Japan.

Oyo sent personalized hotel recommendations and price offers to customers through SMS, emails, and especially push notifications. However, OYO faced a characteristic problem. The delivery rate of Chinese OEMs such as MI devices was abysmally low. Considering that over 17-20% of OYO users used Xiaomi devices, OYO witnessed low delivery rates. It was less than 30% for active users. As the overall adoption of Xiaomi devices grew, OYO had to find ways to increase the delivery rate for Xiaomi devices.

MoEngage stitches together all channels seamlessly and complements them with features like Dynamic Product Messaging, Advanced Analytics, Intelligent Delay Optimization, and Push Amplification™.

OYO employed MoEngage's Push Amplification™ Plus to improve its push delivery rate while personalizing messaging to send offers and discounts to users based on their app usage. With MoEngage Push Amplification, OYO was able to improve its delivery rate by 44% for Xiaomi devices and saw an increment of 25% in their overall campaign notification delivery. Using this feature, the brand was able to deliver its push notifications to users who owned a Xiaomi or any other Chinese smartphone. MoEngage’s Push Amplification offers a unique fallback mechanism to deliver notifications at a later time in case the FCM fails. This helped the brand in reaching more users and ensure users never miss an update from OYO. An overall boost in push notification delivery also supported in converting more users eventually.

Once the push notifications were getting delivered, OYO wanted to employ personalization. Using MoEngage’s Dynamic Product Messaging (DPM), the brand decided to engage active as well as dormant users using their search and booking history to offer the right message at the right time. Eventually, the brand improved the engagement at the userlevel by offering communication that included hotel attributes and user behavior within the app.

To make customer engagement more dynamic, the OYO Rooms team utilized MoEngage’s dynamic messaging feature that customized communication based on customer actions and behavior. They employed smart triggered push notifications to send offers and discounts to customers based on their usage of the app.

• 44% improvement in delivery rates for Xiaomi devices • 15% boost contributed via Push Amplification™ Plus • 2x higher CTRs using personalized notifications • 25% improvement in overall push notifications campaign

OYO was facing low delivery rates on Chinese OEMs such as MI devices. With increasing adoption of Xiaomi devices, the team was keen to increase the delivery rates for them. With MoEngage’s Push Amplification™ a fallback mechanism was set up to deliver notifications at a later time if the FCM fails.

Once the push notifications were getting delivered, the team decided to employ personalization . Using MoEngage’s Dynamic Product Messaging, they were able to engage active as well as dormant customers by offering them the right message at the right time, using their search and booking history.

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