Japanese telecom and internet major SoftBank Group has made its fourth investment in the booming start-up ecosystem in India. The group has led an investment of $100 million (Rs 630 crore) in budget-hotels marketplace OYO Rooms. OYO’s existing investors Greenoaks Capital, Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed India also participated in the fresh round of funding.
The new funding announcement is Japanese major’s fourth investment in India in the last 12 months. SoftBank has made around $1 billion investment in the country’s top tier online retailer and taxi hailing start-ups like Snapdeal, Ola and real estate player Housing.com.
In October last year, SoftBank Chairman and chief executive Masayoshi Son had said that they will make an investment of $10 billion (over Rs.60,000 crore) in India’s IT and communications space.
OYO will use the fresh capital rose to implement customer experience initiatives, build technology products and expand in the hotel industry.
The company was founded in 2013 by 21-year-old Ritesh Agarwal and has presence in more than 70 cities including Delhi, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Goa, Chennai, Kolkata and others with more than 12,000 plus available rooms.
Commenting on the investment Ritesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO of OYO Rooms said, “We are at the forefront of solving a problem of lack of predictability of experience across hotels in the country. We are excited to have global investors like SoftBank partner with us in this vision. Their experience in building innovative companies globally will bolster our efforts to grow into one of the world's most trusted hotel businesses.”
Earlier in March this year, Oyo Rooms had raised around $25 million (around Rs 150 crore) from Lightspeed India, Sequoia Capital, Greenoaks.
Of late, among the Indian start-up segment budget hotel and accommodation services provider are getting huge traction from VC. In February, Chennai-based online accommodation services marketplace Stayzilla had raised $20 million in Series B round from Nexus Ventures. Another player ZO rooms had also raised undisclosed amount of funding recently, while Treebo Hotels another affordable and reliable hotels provider had secured $6 million in funding from Matrix Partners India and SAIF Partners.
Recently, media reports suggested that SoftBank Corp planned on shutting down its VC arm. The reports also stated that it will avoid investing in early-stage companies.
