OYO Rooms has taken one more step towards confirming itself as a one-stop-shop for a variety of services by acquiring wedding banquet firm Weddingz.in.
OYO has already been managing banquet halls and offering wedding services; the addition of Weddinz.in throws it right in the middle of the entire wedding arrangement and management space which is believed to be a $40 billion in India and $500 billion worldwide.
Still a very fragmented space, the weddings banquets business in the country offers an opportunity for OYO to bring to the table its capabilities, efficiencies and superior service quality to the business and create a niche for itself.
Commenting on the development, Maninder Gulati, Chief Strategy Officer – OYO, said, “It’s thrilling that our very first acquisition in the wedding segment involves a celebrated and loved brand, Weddingz.in. What this partnership facilitates is combining OYO’s capabilities of asset management and technology with the scale Weddingz.in offers in India’s fragmented $40bn weddings industry. The company has a healthy scale of managing 1,500-plus wedding events per quarter, with an inventory size of over 40 banquets spread across Mumbai and Delhi. At OYO, our experience ranges from end-to-end management of homes, villas, small asset to hotels with 100+ rooms while running successful businesses for our asset partners and all these facets will be of utmost importance while operating in the wedding industry that in the dire need of fundamental changes and improvements.’’
OYO will look to making a lot of improvements in the process of management of weddings and with the lucrative numbers (10 million weddings in a year) in front of them, the scope to scale up the business and grow exponentially the future looks bright. This has been acknowledged by both OYO as well as Weddingz.in in their statements, after the announcement of the acquisition by OYO has been made. The joint team will now plan to expand the wedding planning and management services to more cities within India and take it to some of the other countries OYO is already operating in.
OYO has reached a record 100,000 rooms under its management including those leased and under franchise and this includes all 161 cities and locations. OYO has managed to win a few awards in its fields of operations.