A 24-year-old Indian entrepreneur backed by some of the world’s biggest technology investors will invest £40m to expand his budget Oyo Hotels franchise in Britain.
Ritesh Agarwal, founder and chief executive of Oyo, has signed up his first two hotels in London, in Paddington and Ilford, and expects to have about 300 hotels with 5,000 rooms by the end of next year.
He said that Oyo was aimed at owners of hotels with fewer than 100 rooms, a market that accounted for 95% of hotels but was largely ignored by the big hotel groups. The first two Oyo hotels have 13 rooms and 30 rooms, which Mr Agarwal claimed were “not the sort of property any of the big boys would go for”.
