Oyo Hotels and Homes is raising $1.5 billion from founder Ritesh Agarwal, SoftBank Group Corp., and other investors as the India lodging startup expands into foreign markets such as the U.S. and Europe. Agarwal, 25, will spend $700 million to buy new shares in the company as part of a previously reported $2 billion plan to triple his ownership stake. Existing investors SoftBank’s Vision Fund, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sequoia India will contribute the rest of the current round.
Agarwal, who founded Oyo in 2013, has built it into India’s second-most valuable startup with a valuation of about $10 billion. Its service covers 1.2 million rooms in over 80 countries, including 590,000 rooms in China. It entered the U.S. earlier this year and now has 7,500 rooms in 60 cities.
