OYO trims 10% of its workforce, aims 250 new hires

Hospitality major and IPO-bound OYO on Saturday said it is downsizing 10 per cent of its 3,700-strong workforce, laying off 600 employees while hiring 250 fresh members in the team.

OYO is merging its product and engineering teams for smoother functioning, according to the company.

"OYO is downsizing its product and engineering, corporate headquarters and the OYO vacation homes teams, while it adds people to the partner relationship management and the business development teams," the company said in a statement.

"OYO will downsize 10 per cent of its 3700-employee base, which includes fresh hiring of 250 members and letting go of 600 employees," it added.

According to the hospitality major, "the downsizing in tech is also happening in teams which were developing pilots and proof of concepts such as in-app gaming, social content curation and patron-facilitated content".

"Additionally, members of projects which have now been successfully developed and deployed such as 'Partner SaaS' are being either let go or are being redeployed in core product & tech areas such as AI-driven pricing, ordering and payments," it added.

IPO-bound hospitality tech player OYO has surprised the industry observers by posting a positive EBITDA of Rs 10 crore in the first quarter of FY23 -- against the backdrop of Rs 472 crore EBITDA loss in FY22.

The key drivers of this recovery, according to the information filed by the company, were higher monthly revenue per hotel due to increase in occupancy rates and more homes being added to the platform.

The company said that "it will be adding 250 members primarily in its relationship management teams to ensure better consumer and partner satisfaction and in business development teams to help scale up the number of hotels and homes on its platform".

"Every member of the OYO team and I myself will proactively endorse the strength of each of these employees. It is unfortunate that we are having to part ways with a lot of these talented individuals who have made valuable contributions to the company," said Ritesh Agarwal, Founder and Group CEO, OYO.

As integration of various functions of its European vacation homes business progresses, it is downsizing in some parts of the business to increase efficiency and harness synergies.

The company said it has also reassessed its corporate headquarter base afresh and is merging congruent roles and flattening team structures where needed.