OYO is scouting for acquisitions both in the country and overseas, as part of its plans to expand organically, reports Economic Times. The hotel rooms aggregator is flush with funds, having raised around $250 million from investors including SoftBank. The startup itself got valued in the range of $850-900 million at the time of this funding.
The process of looking for suitable targets to takeover is not new at OYO. Though not much has been known in the public domain, OYO has gone through with six ‘acqui-hires’ since 2016. These are being described cash transactions of small value but the teams working for these entities are directly acquired and absorbed into OYO’s rolls.
A couple of such efforts have failed to materialize as well; one example being Zo Rooms, in 2015. In that particular case, the talks failed on bitter note with both parties are now engaged in a legal battle.
Ritesh Agarwal, the CEO of OYO told ET that it is not just hotels Oyo wants to add to its kitty. It could be looking at wider range of companies that can include IoT (Internet of Things) based technologies. The company does appear to be quite aggressive on this front. Having marked its presence in markets like Malaysia and Bhutan OYO is not averse to looking at China either.
Though full details have not been shared publicly, the company is engaged in talks with a few more target companies. OYO might look at some kind of an arms-length management of the acquired companies with OYO providing the technology and capital and the team operating as entrepreneurs and keep growing the business.
The latest such acquisition done by the company has been DoneThing, a startup which has an investor in the form of Bennet & Coleman, through its investment vehicle, Brand Capital.