The OYO Rooms storyline — highlighting entrepreneurial lessons of 2016

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OYO Rooms is one startup that needs no introduction. Now 23 years old, Ritesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO of OYO, began his journey in January 2013, starting with one hotel in Gurgaon. The company, as of October 2016, has around 6,500 hotels in over 220 cities in India, and has been named India's largest budget hotel chain.

2016, year-in-review:

This year, they focused on strengthening their leadership team with the hiring of Anil Goel as their first CTO and Smriti Subramanian as their General Counsel.

In September, OYO introduced a guaranteed early check-in called sunrise check-in at 6 am, and also recently rolled out OYO Captain, a personalised concierge service in the budget hotel category. It moved into a larger office in Gurgaon and opened a new office in Kochi.

They won the Quest Experience Award for Best Use of Social Media for Customer Experience (CX) Improvement and were a runner-up in the Hotelier India award for front desk management. 

Learnings from 2016:

Ritesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO of OYO, told YourStory, “Focused and relentless commitment to high-quality guest experience has helped us maintain momentum and become the preferred choice of accommodation for our guests. This year, we were able to crystallise our mission - Quality living at the right location at the right prices - further. We are geared up to take responsibility for the repair and maintenance of quality real-estate supply, which is the biggest bottleneck in the growth of the category. Our experience, having managed over five million check-ins from Ladakh to Kanyakumari, helps us understand both supply and customer concerns.”

He further added, “We also realise that to continuously raise our standards, we need the right manpower at our properties; so, we have established the OYO Skill Institute to train people and create a pipeline of skilled workforce for the hospitality industry.”

Key Milestones till 2016:

• Grew our network to over 70,000 rooms in 7,000 properties across 200 cities to become the largest hotel network in India
• Recorded average Tripadvisor rating of 4.3
• More than 100 OYOs are now listed in the top-10 hotel rankings* for their city (including in Noida and Bengaluru)

           * Specialty lodging category

OYO Rooms Storyline

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