OYO enters food biz, lists delivery-only kitchens on Swiggy, Zomato, Uber Eats

Pressing on with its aggressive expansion drive, budget hospitality chain OYO has forayed into online food business with the launch of private labels on food delivery platforms Swiggy, Zomato and Uber Eats.

The company has launched two private labels – ‘Adraq by OYO’ and ‘O Biryani by OYO’ – via 20 cloud (delivery-only) kitchens in Mumbai and Delhi-NCR (National Capital Region). These kitchens offer North Indian and Chinese cuisines, and more.

OYO told TechCircle: "As the largest hotel chain in India, operating franchised and lease assets, we do have an active play in the food and beverages' business with an average of about 25% of our revenue coming through the kitchens we operate in some of our hotels."

News portal Entrackr first reported the development.

The move follows recent media reports that OYO is in advanced discussions to buy cloud kitchen and food delivery platform FreshMenu.

Run by Oravel Stays Pvt. Ltd, OYO has been on an expansion spree and is currently present in 500 cities across eight countries. It operates over 13,000 franchised or leased hotels and over 6,000 homes as part of its chain. In India, OYO is present in over 180 cities with more than 8,700 properties.

Growing beyond hotel aggregation, OYO had launched its holiday homestay product OYO Home in 2017 and acquired Mumbai-based Weddingz.in, an online marketplace for wedding venues and vendors, in 2018. Recently, several media reports said the company is in talks acquire Delhi-based co-working space provider Innov8. In June last year, OYO had made its debut in co-living space with OYO Living.

Earlier this month, OYO had closed its $1 billion investment round with the last tranche of $100 million coming from Chinese ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing. Under the $1 billion round, OYO had earlier raised $800 million from SoftBank and other investment firms including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital and Greenoaks Capital; and $100 million from Singapore ride-hailing company Grab.