Oyo buys Las Vegas Hooters hotel

In what is its first property purchase in the U.S. Softbank backed Oyo hotels and homes, has bought the Hooters Casino Hotel Las Vegas. Hooters Casino Hotel will now be rebranded and designed as Oyo Hotel & Casino Las Vegas. It provides 657 rooms across 19 floors and a 35,000 square-foot casino.

Earlier in June, Oyo had announced its plan to invest $300 million in the U.S. Currently, there it has over 112 Oyo Hotels in more than 60 cities and 21 states in the U.S. Oyo has been on an acquisition spree. In July, it confirmed its acquisition of Innov8, a co-working spaces provider, highlighting the company’s increasing focus on the fast-growing segment.

Founded in 2013, OYO Hotels & Homes is the world’s third-largest chain of hotels, homes, managed living and workspaces. The portfolio combines fully operated real estate comprising of more than 23,000 hotels and 125,000 vacation homes. Over the years, it has attracted an array of investors including the likes of Airbnb, SoftBank Vision Fund, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Greenoaks Capital, Sequoia Capital India, and Hero Enterprise.

In May, Oyo said it has agreed to acquire Amsterdam-based Leisure Group, from Axel Springer, a media and technology company, for an undisclosed amount. Leisure is a vacation rental company in Europe, which manages holiday homes, holiday parks, and holiday apartments. The transaction was pegged around $416 million, according to several media reports. Last year, it acquired Mumbai-based Weddingz.in, an online marketplace for wedding venues, and AblePlus Solutions Pvt. Ltd, an Internet of Things (IoT) technology company.

Oyo in talks to acquire FreshMenu

Gurugram based hospitality chain OYO Hotels and Homes is in talks to acquire Bengaluru based cloud Kitchen startup FreshMenu in a deal worth $50 Mn - $60 Mn. FreshMenu shareholder Zodius Capital may be paid in cash while, the founders and investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and GrowthStory will be allocated Oyo shares, if the deal is finalized.

If the deal goes through successfully, Oyo will make its foray into online food delivery business. The move is said to enhance its hospitality business portfolio and food is an essential element to its operations. Bengaluru-based FreshMenu had been looking to raise capital for the last few months. The deal is being considered as a win-win proposition for both the companies.

Oyo is building a food team, which will help FreshMenu expand to more cities under the Oyo brand name. The idea could be more about adding the element of food to further build the hospitality business rather than getting into the food delivery entirely.

FreshMenu clocks about 15,000-20,000 orders daily and if Oyo acquires the startup kitchen, it will leverage highly on the company's infrastructure of 170,000 rooms across India. Oyo's advanced rounds of these discussions with FreshMenu follow after it recently rose close to $1 billion from Japan's SoftBank with participation from ride-hailing companies Grab and Didi Chuxing taking up its valuation to $5 billion.

Byju acquires US based Osmo

Online tutoring start-up Byju’s has acquired US based playful learning system Osmo for $120 Million. The acquisition, Byju’s first ever of a US company, will help the Indian start-up expand into a new younger demographic of kids between 3 and 8, and allow it to tap into Osmo’s physical-to-digital technology and content.

Byju’s has aggressive plans for the international market and will continue to make big investments in technology to further personalize learning for students. It has been growing at 100% over the past three years and is on target to triple revenue to Rs 1,400 crore this year.

Just last month, Byju’s raised $540 million at a valuation of $3.6 billion, as robust investor demand swelled the size of its latest funding round and turned the founder of the eponymous start-up into an overnight billionaire. That funding round put Byju’s fourth on the list of India’s most valuable start-ups, after digital payments firm Paytm (One97 Communications Ltd), cab-hailing service Ola and budget hotel chain Oyo Rooms.

The focus at Byju’s has been on creating engaging, immersive content offered through personalized learning experiences to students across grades. Osmo’s use of mixed reality interactions can help it expand its platform to new audiences and applications. Launched in 2015, the Byju’s Learning App currently offers personalized programs for school students across grades 4-12. It has over 2 million annual paid subscriptions and 30 million students cumulatively learning from the app.

Oyo acquires AblePlus

Hospitality firm Oyo has acquired AblePlus, the Mumbai based Internet of Things (IoT) startup. Oyo will now be introducing IoT into the basic precincts of their Hotel Management System.

The company also introduced industry-first initiative of Digital Arrival & Departure Register, which has been adopted by the state governments of Haryana and Rajasthan. In addition, Oyo also makes use of Machine Learning (ML) based algorithms to personalize the user journey. Customers will now be able to look at self-check-ins, which will be supported by digital arrival and departure register, self KYP with Aadhaar, and IoT server-managed smart locks.

With the rollout of the added technology enabled operations, Oyo team believes they will be able to track assets across properties better, and also work in reduction of wastage of electricity and minimizing the carbon footprint. This will take OYO a step closer to consolidating its vision of creating beautiful living spaces across India.

The team is also looking at introducing voice-based assistance in rooms, enabling automation of controlling appliances and lights among other services. Going forward, Oyo also plans to implement a comprehensive guest entertainment programme that will include fitness, gaming and augmented experiences. The company is also looking at several other integrated technology solutions including enhancing its Oyo Asset Management offering, so that it is easy to partner with them.

Go-Jek acquires LeftShift Technologies

Indonesian Bike hailing app Go-Jek has acquired Pune based app development company LeftShift Technologies Pvt. Ltd for an undisclosed amount to strengthen its product development efforts, making its fourth acquisition of an Indian firm.

It helped more than 200 companies design and develops mobile apps, including companies such as BookMyShow, Practo, OYO, Byju’s Classes, Airtel and Emerson. It also counted Go-Jek as one of its customers. The product development centre, which has about 60 employees now, comprises developers, data scientists, designers and product managers who work on mining data and delivering better experiences for consumers.

Go-Jek had earlier acquired Bengaluru-based home healthcare start-up Pianta in August. In February, the firm announced that it bought Bengaluru-based software engineering company C42 Engineering India Pvt. Ltd and Delhi-based development and operations company CodeIgnition Software Solutions Pvt. Ltd for engineering talent. These deals are so-called acqui-hires, which is jargon for an acquisition made to gain access to the employees of the acquired company.

Go-Jek offers stock options to the employees of its acquired companies that vest over four years. Go-Jek was started by Harvard graduate in 2011 and is the first Indonesian start-up to achieve the “unicorn” status after a $550 million funding round in August led by KKR and Warburg Pincus.

Oyo Rooms may buy Zo Rooms

Budget Hotel site Oyo Rooms (Oravel Stays Pvt. Ltd) has expressed interest in buying smaller rival Zo Rooms, which is scrambling to raise a fresh round of funds in order to avoid being sold. The overture from Oyo Rooms follows the entry of large online travel firms MakeMyTrip, Yatra Online Pvt. Ltd and Goibibo into the budget hotel segment.

Though Zo Rooms, run by Zostel Hospitality Pvt. Ltd is currently in conversations with at least two investors for a fresh funding round, it faces an uphill task as its biggest investor; Tiger Global Management has decided to go slow on writing large cheques for the smaller companies in its portfolio. Zo raised roughly $35 Million from Tiger and Orios Management this year.

Oyo Rooms is the early market leader among budget hotels, having raised $100 Million from Japan Softbank Group and others in August. Budget hotel aggregators were supposed to be the next big thing for investors and entrepreneurs, but as with most other new, unproven business such as food tech, investors and entrepreneurs seem to have overestimated the potential of the business.

Budget hotel launches by online travel agencies has only made investors in hotel startups more cautious. MakeMyTrip, Yatra and Goibibo launched their budget hotel businesses, putting them in direct competition with Oyo and Zo and potentially triggering consolidation among startups. The online travel firms have already delisted Oyo and Zo from their platforms, indicating their ambition to build a budget hotels business independently.