INCORPORATED

everything in the first year ( 2013),” says Agarwal. Although the company was incorporated in 2012, the brand was called Oravel Stays, which was a platform for listing budget accommodations. In 2013, Agarwal pivoted, from being just a discovery marketplace to a managed marketplace. He created many playbooks – supply, demand, operations and audit – and followed them to the tee to strengthen its processes. “The supply playbook would have the details to the level of saying: what are the 20 things that make an ideal OYO? Without that, I wouldn't even sign the hotel,” he says. “Once we sign a hotel, we standardise it in seven days. To do this, we have a large offline operations network to audit the hotel and standardise it,” he adds. Among others, the checklist for hotel audits includes the quality of linen, five-inch mattresses, stainless steel dustbins with a black cover, clean and operational toilets, and bed side sockets to charge mobile phones. Its premium hotels have a coffee maker as well.

The playbooks, combined with great engineering and leadership, did the trick. Also, the start-up wanted to focus on one city at a time. “In 2013 and 2014, we just operated in Gurgaon. In 2014, we had 40 hotels and, now, there are over 380,” says Agarwal. Once Gurgaon was built, replicating the same model multiple times in multiple cities was easy.

Of course, discounting, or “incentivising” the customer played a role, as did the minimum guarantees for hotel owners in newer markets. OYO typically priced its inventory 30 per cent lower than competition. “In newer markets, where we were trying to enable a habit of the customer, we incentivise either the customer or the owner. In markets like Feb 2012