GURGAON-BASED budget accommodation provider OYO Rooms has raised about US$24 million through financial institutions for expanding its network to 1,000 hotels in 25 cities by year-end.
Currently, OYO Rooms has more than 200 hotels in 10 cities booking 50,000 room nights monthly.
Ritesh Agarwal, CEO, OYO Rooms, said: “We are going to use these funds to fuel our next round of growth and to realise our ambition of becoming the largest technology-enabled network of hotels in the world.
“The demand for predictable-quality budget accommodation is enormous in India and we believe we have barely scratched the surface. The north-east region is definitely part of our expansion plan and we will launch OYO Rooms in major tourism and business districts in due course.
“The seven north-eastern states are gifted with many tourist attractions and we are well aware of the shortage of high-quality budget accommodation in the region. While we are working towards bridging this gap, we will also consider any opportunity to expand outside India.”
OYO Rooms’ USP is to offer hotels with high-quality rooms with an average 20-35 per cent lower price than comparable rooms in other hotels.
“Our rooms start at just US$15 per night and have all the standard amenities. Our vision is to offer the ‘OYO Rooms experience’ to every business, leisure and pilgrim traveller across 100 cities through a network of 10,000 hotels,” Agarwal added.
Bejul Somaia, managing director, Lightspeed India, said: “The economy-stay segment is large, unorganised and fragmented. OYO brings a new, scalable and customer-friendly approach to addressing this market.”
