Oyo raises $1 Bn at $5 Bn valuation from existing investors

India's hotel chain Oyo has raised $1 billion round fund from existing investors including SoftBank Vision Fund, Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

The investors have put in $800 million now, with commitments for rest $200 million in coming months.

The fund will majorly be utilised in Oyo's overseas expansion plan. Around 60 per cent of it will be put into China, where Oyo launched its operation in May last year.

Entrackr had first reported its launches in China, UK and Dubai. In China, it claims to have set up a base of over 50,000 rooms in the span of three months.

In the past two years, Oyo has expanded beyond India into Dubai, Malaysia, Nepal and UK.

"We plan to rapidly scale our business in these countries while continuing to invest further in technology and talent,” said Bloomberg report quoting Ritesh Agarwal, founder and CEO of Oyo.

Agarwal also plans to act as an enabler for small hotel owners to create quality living space globally.

With this deal, Oyo has now become the third valuable startup in India after Flipkart ($20 billion) and Paytm ($10 billion). Oyo was previously valued at about $850 million when it raised its last round (about $260 million) from SoftBank and other investors in September 2017. Three months later it had pivoted from aggregation to a pure-play franchise model.

Currently, OYO claims to operate 8,500 hotels and over 125,000 rooms in more than 230 cities in India.

Prior to this round, five years old hotel chain has received around $450 million funding. It has got backing from investors such as Softbank, Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture and Hero Enterprise amongst others.