Ritesh Agarwal, the founder of hotel room aggregator OYO, is firmly focused on the future. "Initially, it was about the difficulty of convincing potential partners and recruits to work with us. Since it was an untested business model, hotel owners were unsure about the value we could bring. But once they saw the impact, which reflected in higher customer repeats and revenues, as well as in operations, revenue management and CRM (customer relationship management) becoming more efficient through the use of OYO apps, they were convinced."
OYO started in 2013 as a full-service operator but a year or so later changed its strategy to focus on room aggregation and standardisation. It also inspired a host of similar start-ups in the same space, almost all of whom - including OYO - are now very actively involved in running the hotels, right from providing technology solutions for a seamless service to re-building and refurbishing the properties to making strategies for increasing occupancy. "We used to take the entire hotel and operate it entirely. It was only in 2014 or early 2015, when we had an aggressive competitive environment, that we thought that aggregating rooms was the only way to have a foot in the door of a large number of these assets," says OYO's Agarwal.