Gurleen K.
OYO has several accommodation brands, including OYO Townhouse, a midscale neighbourhood hotel aimed at millennial travellers, and OYO Home, which it says was India's first home management system for fully managed private homes in different locations. OYO Vacation Homes describes itself as the world's 3rd largest vacation home brand and includes Belvilla, Danland, DanCenter, and Germany-based Traum-Ferienwohnungen. SilverKey is for business travellers on short or long trips. Capital O offers hotel bookings, Palette is an upper-end leisure resort category, Collection O handles booking and rentals for business travellers, and OYO LIFE is for long-term rentals. YO! HELP assists with check-ins, check-outs, and payments, while Oyo 360 helps small hotels and homeowners list their properties through a faster self-onboarding process. Ritesh Agarwal started Oravel Stays in 2012 to list and book budget accommodation, then renamed the company OYO in 2013. The company partnered with hotels to offer a similar guest experience across cities. Soon after launching Oravel Stays, Ritesh Agarwal received a $100,000 grant through the Thiel Fellowship, a two-year program from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. In 2019, OYO had over 17,000 employees worldwide, with about 8,000 in India and South Asia. OYO Hotels & Homes operated as a hotel chain that leased and franchised properties. The company invested in capex, hired general managers to oversee operations and guest experience, and generated around a million job opportunities in India and South Asia alone. That year, it also opened 26 training institutes across India for people interested in hospitality. In April 2019, OYO announced its OPEN program to help partner hotels reach their business goals, and introduced an upgraded Co-OYO app giving hotel partners full visibility of business and customer metrics. In June 2021, OYO Rooms worked with Yatra, Airbnb, and EaseMyTrip to form the Confederation of Hospitality.
