India-based budget hotel booking platform Oyo Rooms has raised $100m in a series B round led by telecommunications and internet company SoftBank, The Economic Times reported earlier today.
Venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners, VC fund Sequoia Capital India and investment firm Greenoaks Capital also took part in the round.
SoftBank was first reported to be in advanced talks about leading the round in May 2015 and was reportedly set to acquire a stake sized at between 25% and 30%. The size of the stake SoftBank has taken has not been disclosed.
Oyo was originally founded as Oravel Stays in 2012. It operates a platform to book standardised hotel rooms, which are priced as low as $16 a night and meet a list of requirements including internet access and high quality linen and food.
The platform offers rooms at more than 1,000 hotels across 80 cities, having expanded from 350 hotels across 16 cities just three months ago. Oyo intends to use the funding to boost those numbers to 50,000 rooms across 100 cities by the end of the year.
Greenoaks, Sequoia and Lightspeed provided about $25m in series A funding for the company in March 2015. Lightspeed and DSG Consumer Growth had previously invested in its $500,000 seed round in May 2014.
Oyo graduated from accelerator Venture Nursery, which contributed to an undisclosed seed round alongside eight angel investors in 2012.
Ritesh Agarwal, founder and CEO of Oyo Rooms, said: “[Our] long-term plan is to have 500,000 rooms as a part of Oyo brand network across 250 cities in India over the next two years and since it is a marketplace model, the more supply we are able to get on the platform the more demand we will get from consumers.”