Oyo Hotels & Homes, launched in 2013, last week submitted paperwork for an initial public offering in India, seeking a valuation of $10 billion to $12 billion, according to Reuters.
Pre-pandemic, Oyo was one of the fastest-growing companies in the hospitality space, but Covid-19 hit the company hard. Its losses for the fiscal year ending March 2020 were 105.86 billion rupees ($1.4 billion), but they lessened by March 2021 to 33.82 billion rupees ($455 million), according to Reuters.
Oyo in June 2019 launched its U.S. division with a commitment to invest $300 million in the region. In subsequent interviews with BTN—including one with former Oyo U.S. head Kasra Moshkani in November 2020—the company assured its commitment to growing the market. However, Oyo began to lay off U.S. employees in 2020, and by February 2021, CEO Ritesh Agarwal told The Financial Times that the company would focus on India, Southeast Asia and short-term rentals in Europe. In a July 2021 Reuters interview, Agarwal said that "expanding in China and the U.S. is not a priority at the moment."
Among the company's biggest financial backers is Japan's SoftBank.