As soon as the corona virus infected the brightest star in Softbank’s investment portfolio,Oyo, the funding company has determined to take a direct position in the management of Ritesh Agarwal-founded startup’s Latin America business. Softbank, via a joint venture, will control all hotels in the LatAm region, according to Henrique Weaver, head of Oyo Brazil.
The Japanese multinational conglomerate, which also occurs to be the biggest investor in homegrown Oyo, will use part of its $5 billion Latin America fund to invest in the newly formed company called Oyo Latam, Reuters reported. The newly founded company will take the reins of 1,000 hotels located mainly in Brazil and Mexico, Henrique Weaver said.
On April 1, 2020, Sprint completed the merger with T-Mobile US, which was majority-owned by Deutsche Telekom, making T-Mobile the parent company of Sprint until the Sprint brand is phased out on August 2, 2020.
In July 2020, SoftBank considers sale or IPO of British chip designer Arm Holdings, For Q2 of 2020, the company grossed a revenue of $12 billion.
The company invests in Capex,hires GMs to oversee operations and customer experience as well as generating around a million job opportunities in India and South Asia alone.
Hit with a pandemic, Oyo has been cutting costs, but its expansion plans on hold reduced hotel footprint and have laid off personnel after revenues fell. In line with the most recent fundraiser valuations, Oyo is pegged at $10 billion. Softbank’s move comes close on the heels of the crisis at hand at Oyo and both companies would now have equal representation on the board. This indicates that the Japanese investor remains keen on retaining Indian unicorn on track regardless of hiccups and is more closely overseeing Oyo’s operations in markets which include China, India, and Japan.
Henrique Weaver stated that Latin America has proved to be a good in shape for Oyo, with a wonderful speedy growth pace because the hotel market is extremely fragmented in the region. But, because of the pandemic, the company was forced to permit go off 500 employees in Brazil. The company now has a group of workers of 140 people and has additionally given up its workplace area and slashed operating costs. The company has also laid off employees in the America and Europe and shuttered workplaces in other global markets.
