Oyo secures $1 billion in fresh funds to drive China expansion

Hotel booking startup Oyo said on Tuesday it's raising $1 billion (Rs 7,282 crore) in fresh funding. The bulk of the funds will be used to drive expansion in China, where the company started operations about ten months ago.

The billion dollar boost comes from existing investors such as SoftBank Vision Fund, Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners Bloomberg reported.

It was widely reported earlier this month that China's Didi Chuxing was likely to make a huge investment in the company.

As much as 60 percent of the new money will be spent for expanding Oyo's Chinese operations. "With this additional funding, we plan to rapidly scale our business in these countries, while continuing to invest further in technology and talent. We will also deploy fresh capital to take our unique model that enables small hotel owners to create quality living spaces, global." Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal said in a statement.

The fresh round of funding has taken Oyo's valuation to $5 billion, making it India's second most valuable startup after Paytm. Flipkart, the biggest ever startup success story in India, was acquired by Walmart Inc. earlier this year.

Oyo, which was launched by the college dropout Agarwal in 2013 in Gurgaon, now has a network of 125,000 rooms across the country. In China, Oyo has expanded into 171 cities and has now 87,000 rooms, Bloomberg reported.

"In the last 12 months, we have increased our international footprint to five countries - India, China, Malaysia and Nepal, and more recently in the UK. With this additional funding, we plan to rapidly scale our business in these countries, while continuing to invest further in technology and talent," Agarwal added.