OYO has close to $1B to fund operations, says Ritesh Agarwal

Hospitality firm Oyois recovering from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and has around $1 billion to fund operations, according to OYO Founder and Group CEO Ritesh Agarwal.

In a fireside chat with OYO board member Troy Alstead, the 27-year-old Agarwal said the company has had a strong recovery over the last few months.

"... the company has good amount of cash, we have continued to hold on to close to a billion dollars of cash... at the same time, we've been very disciplined in making sure that we can respond to the crisis in a good way to try and ensure that we can come out of it at the right time," Agarwal said.

"While noting that the company already has a substantial amount of good looking opportunities that exist, he said, "our view is that our management's focus is to make sure that we give a very well designed, IPO-ready company, available for our shareholders and our board members to make the right decision".

Without giving any timeline for the IPO, Agarwal said that at the end of the day, what is the right time to go out is frankly a decision of the board to make and from the management side, "we'll be ready to make sure that we build a company that is ready to go public".

"We will look at various things like that of the market situation, opportunities outside and so on that the board will consider and then potentially help advise on the timeline," he added.

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About the road ahead, Agarwal said "we will most definitely have, on average, a much better 2021 than we had a 2020".

Oyo is one of the largest startups in the portfolio of SoftBank Group Corp., which reached a valuation of $10 billion before the downturn.

(Disclaimer: Additional background information has been added to this PTI copy for context)