Oyo Hotels & Homes’ losses increased more than 6.6 times to Rs 2,385 crore in the year to March 2019, according to the company’s valuation report filed with the RoC.
Revenues from operations rose to Rs 6,457 crore, a smart increase of 4.5 times, the documents sourced from business signals platform Paper.vc showed. However, total expenses shot up to `9,027.53 crore from `1,835.38 crore in FY18.
Oyo said in RoC filings late last week it was in the process of raising $1.5 billion through a Series F financing round led by SoftBank. That would take the total amount raised to $3.2 billion.
While SoftBank is investing about $810 million through SoftBank Vision Fund India Holdings (Cayman), Ritesh Agarwal-led RA Hospitality Holdings is putting in about $693 million. The bulk of the funds will be used to build the US business.
According to a valuation report by Romesh Vijay, the firm was valued at $5.32 billion on June 30, 2019. As part of its last $1-billion fundraise which was closed early this year, SoftBank Vision Fund put in $800 million while Singapore-based Grab and China-based ride-sharing company Didi Chuxing put in $100 million each in the company.
Since it was set up in 2013, Oyo has been on an expansion spree, widening its footprint to 80 countries. Earlier this year, the Gurgaon-based firm said it plans to invest $300 million in growing its US business, the newest country to be added to its portfolio.
Most e-commerce businesses stayed in FY19. Flipkart Internet posted losses of over Rs 1,000 crore, while Paytm’s parent company reported a near 165% y-o-y increase in losses to about Rs 3,959.6 crore.
In an interview to FE earlier this year, founder and group CEO Ritesh Agarwal said “CY2019 has been promising” for the company. “We are happy to share the company has seen a 4.4 times year-on-year growth in revenue in June 2019 (vs June 2018),” Agarwal said. Oyo which counts India and China as core markets aims to become the world’s largest hotel chain by 2023.