VIDEO: OYO's Ritesh Agarwal on growth and plans to address hotel owners’ concerns

This year has been one of rapid, global growth for OYO Hotels & Homes, a company that just three years ago was a fledgling brand of budget properties only in India.

Now the company says it is the world’s third-largest chain with more than 35,000 hotels and 125,000 vacation homes in more than 80 countries.

In the past year, the company has been expanding rapidly in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Europe, and it launched its brand in the United States.

Research firm STR ranks OYO as the largest chain in Asia Pacific based on room count, ahead of second place Jin Jiang International by 200,000 rooms. And the U.S. and Europe now account for 20% of OYO’s revenue.

How has this “blitz scaling” been possible? How can the company build a culture and ensure quality of both the product and the customer experience as it is growing so fast?

And how does it address concerns that have been raised by property owners - in India, the U.S. and elsewhere - about OYO’s competencies and management practices?

In a session at The Phocuswright Conference in Florida, OYO CEO Ritesh Agarwal addresses these topics and many others.

He begins with a rapid-fire update on the company’s finances and growth - including that net losses are improving in head market India, down from 147% in fiscal year 2016 to 25% last year with “continued positive improvement” expected for 2019.

Agarwal also shares how OYO is using AI and other technology to identify and onboard new properties much faster than legacy brands, while also acknowledging that technology updates need to happen faster to keep up with the pace of the company’s growth.

Following his remarks, Agarwal sits down to answer questions from Phocuswright analyst Maggie Rauch and Hichame Assi, managing director of APAC and hotels for Kayak/HotelsCombined.

On the topic of reviews and consumer experience, Agarwal says that, starting early next year, OYO will work with properties that have a rating below 3.5 on review sites such as TripAdvisor, and if improvements are not made, OYO will remove its branding from those assets.

Already, he says, OYO has “had hundreds of assets in the OYO history that we’ve let go out of OYO ecosystem because it didn’t follow the rating and the quality of consumer brand standards that we’d like to deliver."

View the entire presentation and interview below.