Hospitality firm Oyo’s India CEO Ankit Gupta and Europe head Mandar Vaidya have exited the firm. In a statement to CNBC-TV18, a company spokesperson said that executives departed six months ago.
“Ankit Gupta and Mandar Vaidya moved on from their roles 6 months ago in March 2023. We are proud of their achievements at OYO and are thankful for their leadership. Both roles were already transitioned 6 months ago to Varun Jain, as COO India, and, Gautam Swaroop, as CEO OYO Vacation Homes, respectively,” the spokesperson added.
Sources close to the company told CNBC-TV18 that Gupta and Vaidya are both working on their entrepreneurial gigs and Gupta is likely to float his venture soon.
"The decision was taken six months ago. The decision was taken because they wanted to start their own ventures. Both Gupta and Vaidya have been helping us out with the transition process. Oyo will announce their replacements when they announce their ventures,” sources added.
Gupta had joined the hospitality giant in 2019 and was the India CEO only for about a year before quitting in March this year. Before heading India operations, Gupta was CEO of the Franchise and Frontier business at Oyo. Meanwhile, Vaidya joined the unicorn in August 2019 as CXO for Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
He was elevated to the CEO of the Europe division in April 2021. Prior to joining Oyo in 2019, both Gupta and Vaidya had worked with McKinsey, the management consulting firm. Oyo also undertook a major management rejig in June when Ankit Mathuria, the company’s CTO had quit. In February too, Oyo had rejigged its top deck and top executives were asked to take on more roles internally. Abhinav Sinha, who was earlier the global COO and also led the product division, was appointed as the chief product and technology officer as Oyo merged the two units. Anuj Tejpal, who was the global chief merchant officer, was asked to also lead the India merchant team.
Their departures come at a time when Oyo has delayed its listing plans multiple times citing the ongoing market conditions and is currently slated to hit Dalal Street later this year. The hotel aggregator pre-filed a fresh draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) with the Securities and Exchange Board of India in March to raise $400-600 million through an initial public offer, sources told CNBC-TV18.
Oyo’s last submission to SEBI, in November 2022, was of its updated results for the first half of the financial year 2022-23, claiming that potential investors need to be made aware of the material uptick in its business performance since its initial IPO application in September 2021.
The hospitality and travel tech company OYO said that it turned cash flow positive in the fourth quarter of FY 2023, in a presentation to employees, a copy of which CNBC-TV18 had viewed. The company is anticipated to end the quarter with nearly Rs 90 crore surplus cash flow.
Founder and CEO Ritesh Agarwal revealed to employees in the internal townhall that the firm has marked the first financial year of adjusted EBITDA profitability since its inception and is expected to clock adjusted EBITDA of nearly Rs 800 crore for FY24.
The company tripled its adjusted EBITDA in H2FY23 to around Rs 185 crore, a jump from when OYO reported a negative adjusted EBITDA of Rs 190 crore in H2FY22.
Sources told CNBC-TV18, that the growth can be attributed to an increase in bookings across all key geographies, but especially in the European homes business that is witnessing unprecedented advance bookings for both the upcoming summer season peak and even the relatively off-season period from November to March.
Oyo recently announced that it plans to double the number of premium hotels such as Townhouse Oak, OYO Townhouse, Collection O and Capital O in India in 2023 by adding approximately 1,800 premium hotels.
