The Story of Oyo’s Troubles Is the Story of Modern India
Photo Credit: An Oyo hotel property in Gurgaon, India. Oyo
Skift Take
What’s happening with Oyo cannot be looked at separately from the modern Indian milieu that gave birth to it, and in which it operates. Oyo now needs to rise above that legacy and bring in the global business practices that ensure it survives and thrives in the future.
There’s a lot to cheer for in Oyo’s rise in the hospitality industry and on the global stage. I have been rooting for Oyo from the start, especially for its ambition to be the first global Indian travel brand in the internet era. As an Indian, I really want to see Oyo succeed on the global stage.
In what seems like a blink, the company has become ubiquitous — and highly visible — across the world’s most populous regions such as India and China, and with that comes a level of scrutiny that is surprising to no one except the company’s management and its major funder SoftBank.
With that scrutiny, also in a blink, it has become a pariah and a cautionary tale of SoftBank-funded excess, à la WeWork of the hospitality world.
While that is certainly one part of the explanation of what is happening with Oyo, it’s also a very simplistic, culturally devoid point of view. When The New York Times published a detailed story on Oyo on January 2, reporting on a series of questi
