India’s Oyo valued at $10B after founder Ritesh Agarwal purchases $2B in shares.
The fast growing Indian hospitality business Oyo has received a valuation of $ 10 billion after its founder Ritesh Agrawal, which on Friday bought the company's capital firm Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners for $ 2 billion.
Agarwal, 25, founded Oyo at the age of 19 in 2013. Now after huge growth in the global hotel chain business, Agrawal chose to increase its 10% stake to 30% through a Cayman Islands company, called RA Hospitality Holdings, according to D. Street Journal Softbank has also increased its percentage ownership as part of this round, which is now almost half of the company.
Oyo has so far raised $ 1.6 billion in equity funding, which is an evaluation of $ 5 billion in its last funding round. Other investors of the company include Airbnb, Grab Holdings and Didi Chuxing.
Oyo is active in more than 800,000 cities in 80 countries, with more than 23,000 hotels in its portfolio. Recently, the company announced plans to invest $ 300 million in the US market, where it currently operates more than 50 Oyo hotels in 35 cities and 10 states.
Earlier this week, the firm of Gurgaon-headquarter introduced the Oyo Workspace. The new unit was born with the acquisition of Startup Innov8, which works with more than 200 employees. According , the four-year-old startup was acquired for approximately $ 30 million.