Exclusive: OYO's Global COO Abhinav Sinha is shifting base to lead US ops

Amidst restructuring of the firm and operations, OYO Rooms’ top management is also going through several changes.

Last month OYO had announced its plan to invest $300 million for expanding in the US - a country that the Ritesh Agarwal led startup has identified as its third home market after India and China.

Now to personally oversee the execution of growth plans in the US, global COO of OYO - Abhinav Sinha is moving base to the Donald Trump-led country, revealed two Entrackr sources privy with the movement of Sinha on the condition of anonymity.

Earlier, apart from being the global COO, Sinha was heading Spain, UK, and Malaysia operations where the respective country heads - Andrew Verbitsky, Jeremy Sanders, and Tan Ming Luk were directly reporting to him.

“Now, he will be spending dedicated time in the US to personally oversee the operations,” emphasised sources.

The company has started US operations with a single unit in Texas in February this year. Within four months, OYO had included 50 cities to this list including Atlanta, Houston, Miami, and Dallas. And the $300 million is going to be invested in the market to renovate properties, build tech, operations and design teams for inventory expansion in the foreign country.

The plan here was to renovate hotels and offer chic and comfortable design based lively and pop hotels to the population at the lowest prices in the area to fuel growth and efficiency rates.

Sinha, being a Harvard Business School postgraduate is slated to have certain idea insights that he can contribute towards these growth plans. 

“This is similar to Agarwal setting up base in China and taking up a Chinese name Li Taxi to personally oversee the company’s second home market. Maninder Gulati and Anuj Tejpal also oversee Chinese operations, but they do it while retaining base in India,” said one of the two sources while talking about the roles of top leadership in OYO on the same condition of anonymity.

Entrackr has sent queries to OYO for confirmation. However, we are yet to hear from the company's spokesperson. We will update the post as and when she responds.

China has now become the largest market for OYO, as well the company has also become the second largest hotel chain in the country within a year of launch. Considering this, it becomes an exciting venture to see how fast OYO grows in its third home market and till what extent.

This development also comes right after OYO reorganised its business into two entities - Alcott Town Partners as well as Oravel Stays. Alcott Town Partners Pvt. Ltd. will now be taking care of the Indian business, while Oravel Stays will be the legal entity for international as well as tech business.

However, with this multifaceted restructuring as well as a larger part of the top leadership being delegated to shift their focus on international operations, the focus of the firm becomes scattered and the Indian operations become a matter of concern.