It's not even a week when IndianWeb2 reported OYO raising $250 million from its existing investor SoftBank, with new investor Hero Enterprise also coming on board. And here comes the another development from the firm. The Hotel aggregator OYO has raised a $10 million strategic investment from China Lodging Group, one of the largest hotel groups in China, reports ETtech.

Commenting on the development, Jenny Zhang, CEO, China Lodging Group said, "The MoU signifies the shared aspirations of China Lodging Group and OYO to explore growth opportunities in the global hospitality industry and to create synergies by working together.”

According to the reports, OYO will combine its technology strengths and operational expertise with China Lodging Group's extensive coverage and strong development capability in China.

Not only this, both the companies will also explore knowledge and technology sharing projects to enable a co-learning opportunity in the fields of technology and hospitality among other things.

"We are very excited about this partnership both in terms of potential opportunities and existing synergies through our complementary strengths and capabilities" told OYO founder & CEO Ritesh Agarwal to ETtech.

OYO, which currently claims to operate 8,500 hotels and 70,000 rooms in more than 230 cities across the country, had raised $90-million funding round, split into two tranches, led by its largest shareholder SoftBank in August 2016.

Prior to this, OYO raised $100 million of funding in April 2016 from SoftBank only. Its other investors include Sequoia Capital, Greenoaks Capital, and Lightspeed Venture Capital, among others. OYO got its first round of funding from Venture Nursery, a Mumbai-based startup accelerator, in December 2012.

Notably, Venture Nursery has cashed out of the startup amid differences which cropped up between the startup accelerator and the OYO in 2015. Venture Nursery held around 2% stake in OYO, which it has exited netting Rs 60 crore in a secondary sale of shares. It had put Rs 2530 lakh in the startup’s first avatar Oravel Stays -an Airbnb clone -between 2012-13.

The firm competes with the likes of Nasdaq-listed online travel operators MakeMyTrip and Yatra, as well as Treebo Hotels and Fab Hotels that have all raised significant amounts of risk capital in 2017.
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