OYO to hire 300 tech professionals in the next six months

SoftBank-backed hospitality chain OYO on Thursday announced it plans to hire over 300 technology professionals including software development, engineering and product managers, designers, data scientists across entry-level to senior leadership roles. 

OYO said it’s looking for full-stack teams with key skill sets and expertise in the areas of machine learning, data engineering and information security, android and iOS developers, according to a statement. 

The expanded design, product and engineering teams will work on building long-term capabilities for OYO from scratch and be tasked with updating the current tech stack. 

The hiring will play a critical role in accelerating OYO’s transformation to a global full-stack technology provider for small and mid-sized hotels and homes, the statement added. OYO has a tech stack of over 50 products and 500 microservices, including consumer and partner apps such as OYO, OYO OS, Co-OYO, as well as several other applications including dynamic pricing app called Tariff Manager, OTA (online travel agents) performance management, Discover OYO, personalized recommendations, Yo! Chatbot, among others.  

 “Over the past year and a half, we’ve been doubling down on our technology and pioneered several industry-first innovations to enhance customer experiences and maximise revenues for SMEs of hotels and homes. As an organisation that is deeply committed to solving problems with technology, inducting top tech talent is a key priority for us,” Dinesh Ramamurthi, chief human resources officer, OYO. 

After business stagnation due to Covid-19 related restrictions, the travel and tourism sector is seeing some early revival.  

Following Zomato’s stock market listing and the upcoming wave of consumer internet IPOs (initial public offerings), OYO has also initiated its processes for a public market debut.

TechCircle reported early this month that OYO is eyeing to raise $1.2 billion through an IPO and has appointed investment banks JP Morgan, Kotak Mahindra Capital and Citi for the same. OYO’s proposed IPO will be a mix of primary issuance and secondary transactions with 10 investors looking to partially exit the company. 

The company raised $660 million in debt from global institutional investors including Fidelity Investments in July, to settle past debts and invest in product and technology. 

Founded in 2013, OYO is backed by investors such as SoftBank Group Corp, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Hero Enterprises, Sequoia Capital India, AirBnB, Grab Holdings and Artha Venture Services. Hindustan Media Ventures, which is controlled by HT Media Ltd, invested Rs 54 crore in the hospitality firm in January 2021. HT Media owns Mosaic Media Ventures which publishes  TechCircle and VCCircle.