Oyo looks to step out of SoftBank cloud, hires independent director to board
Summary
Founded in 2013 by Ritesh Agarwal at age 19 in India, Oyo has quickly grown across 80 markets and is scaling its business in the U.S. with recently converted properties in Dallas and Las Vegas. The leadership announcement comes as Oyos aggressive growth strategy under the guidance of early investor Masayoshi Son of Softbank, has raised eyebrows. Oyos latest fundraising round doubled the company valuation to $10 billion and tripled Agarwals ownership to 30%, inviting speculation from investors. The optics of the fundraising round, while impressive on paper, coincided with WeWorks botched IPO and criticism of founder Adam Neumanns management style. They deserve better products for lower prices and our proposal to our underlying asset owners is we will come in, invest the capital to make mid-market and economy hotels exciting," Agarwal told CNBC in an exclusive interview from the Phocuswright conference in Hollywood, Florida.