OYO elevates Aditya Ghosh, names new India CEO

SoftBank-backed OYO Hotels & Homes has elevated its CEO, India and South Asia, Aditya Ghosh to the company’s board of directors, a year after he joined the hospitality aggregator. Rohit Kapoor, the current CEO, new real estate businesses, has been named Ghosh’s replacement, the company said on Monday.

Ghosh will join founder and group CEO Ritesh Agarwal; Betsy Atkins, founder and CEO, Baja Corporation; Munish Varma, managing partner, SoftBank Vision Fund; and Mohit Bhatnagar, MD, Sequoia Capital India Advisor, among others, on the board, the company said in a statement.

Ghosh, former CEO of IndiGo, was brought in by Agarwal to take over the India business, as the founder worked on his grand plans of going global and expanding beyond being just a hotel aggregator to co-living and co-working spaces.

“One of the biggest characteristics of OYO is the opportunity that we have to create a truly global brand out of India... we aim to set new standards of corporate governance and build a sustainable business at scale, with a clear path to profitability,” Ghosh said in a statement.

The company has more than 35,000 hotels, 125,000 vacation homes, and over 1.2 million rooms, and a presence in 80 countries.

Under Ghosh’s stewardship, the company more than doubled the scale and reach of the hotel and homes business in India and South Asia to about 18,000 hotels from 5,500, and more than 270,000 rooms across 500 cities, OYO said.

Meanwhile, Kapoor has been overseeing the growth of OYO LIFE, the brand’s long-term rental housing portfolio as well as other new real estate businesses in India.

For FY19, OYO reported a net loss of ₹2,384.69 crore and revenue of ₹6,457 crore, according to the valuation report filed with the registrar of companies.