India-based hotel company Oyo Rooms has raised $660 million from global institutional investors in term loan B funding, the company announced. Oyo will use the funds to retire its past debts, strengthen its balance sheet and invest in product technology, among other business purposes, according to the company.
As did other hotel companies, Oyo struggled significantly during the pandemic. It launched U.S. operations in mid-2019 and started to rapidly expand, but after an initial round of layoffs of U.S. employees in January 2020, it let go of about 90 percent of its remaining regional staff in June 2020.
The company brought on Kasra Moshkani, formerly of Uber, in September 2020 to head up the U.S. region. At that time, there were about 300 U.S. Oyo properties, which had reached nearly 92 percent of pre-Covid revenue per available room levels, per Moshkani. For the fourth quarter of 2020, the entire company reported RevPAR of more than 130 percent of pre-Covid levels, according to an Oyo spokesperson.
Oyo has raised about $4.1 billion in 18 funding rounds from 23 investors, according to its Crunchbase profile. The company operates in 80 countries with more than 43,000 hotels and 150,000 vacation homes, according to Oyo's website.