Oyo in last leg to scoop up $100 Mn from SEA ride hailing major Grab

Year 2018 has seen a growth and expansion of OYO Rooms, that only a few can boast of. The company that aims to become world’s largest budget hotel chain by 2022, has expanded its operations into several countries this year, and has raised $1 billion at staggering $5 billion valuation.

As a part of this $1 billion round, Singapore based ride-hailing firm Grab is in advanced talks to invest $100 million in the Ritesh Agarwal led company. The deal which is to be finalised in the next two days is poised as Grab’s first investment in any of the Indian startups.

Both the companies have secured major share of their investment from Softbank, and are bullish on their respective markets. Grab started an anti Uber drive along with Ola and Lyft, and later acquired Uber’s Southeast Asian business. It has been giving tough competition to ride-hailing and logistics startup Go-Jek in Indonesia.

OYO itself entered the Indonesian market this year with 30 fully operated properties and has been spreading its reach in the country that it eyes as a key growth market. This becomes another factor that the two companies bond on.

To head its Indian and South Asian operations the company had recently hired former Indigo President Aditya Ghosh as the CEO for the two sub regions. Within half a month of this announcement, the Gurugram based company has expanded into Spain, and is expecting a $100 million investment from Grab very soon.

Overall, the company’s execution of plans seem to be on the correct path to lead it to its formidable growth. It will be interesting to see the upcoming plans of OYO in its elaborate expansion spree.

This development was first reported by ET.