Aditya Ghosh joins OYO board of directors
Hospitality firm OYO on Monday said it had elevated Aditya Ghosh, chief executive officer (India and South Asia) for the hotels and homes business, as a member of its board of directors. Rohit Kapoor, has been appointed CEO (India and South Asia) for OYO Hotels & Homes, it added.
Just a little over a year after being named chief executive officer (CEO), Oyo Hotels & Homes’ top boss Aditya Ghosh will move to a board position at the firm, handing over the reins to Rohit Kapoor, the CEO of Oyo’s new real estate business.
The move comes at a time when Oyo has started talking of its initial public offering plans and has just been valued at over $10 billion. In a letter to employees earlier on Monday, Ghosh outlined a broad strategy he will follow in his new role.
Ghosh, who joined Oyo from Indigo Airlines where he was president, said in an internal email he would take over his new role at Oyo “from January 1... In my new role at the board, I will provide oversight as Oyo evolves into a truly global high performing company that scales sustainably on the path to profitability with higher expectations from consumers, asset owners, investors, and employees. I intend to actively focus on five key areas, namely safety and security, customer experience, corporate governance, revenue management, and stakeholder communications”.
As a board member, he is joining Oyo founder and group chief executive Ritesh Agarwal, Betsy Atkins, founder and CEO of Baja Corporation; Munish Varma, managing partner, Softbank Vision Fund; Bejul Somaia, partner at Lightspeed India Partners Advisors; Mohit Bhatnagar, managing director, Sequoia Capital India Advisors.
Ghosh said he was looking forward to create a truly global brand from India. “I am, therefore, excited and keen to play a larger role and harness my experience in helping a public company operate well and ascribe to high standards of sustainable growth,” he added.
Kapoor, who joined as CEO of New Real Estate Businesses about a year ago, has been overseeing the growth of Oyo Life — the company’s long-term rental housing portfolio and other new real estate businesses in India. In his new role, Kapoor will look at operations of over 18,000 hotels across over 500 cities in India.
“Given the impressive performance of the hotels’ business in India and South Asia, I do have some big shoes to fill. I will do my best and Aditya (Ghosh) has promised to be my guiding light in the process,” Kapoor said in a statement.
Oyo has recently undergone large-scale corporate restructuring, setting up several subsidiaries and bifurcating operations globally.
Founder Agarwal has moved from executive director to a nonexecutive director in Oyo’s India operation to allow him to take up a more active role in the global operations of Oravel Stays Singapore. “It is our ultimate holding entity for all our global operations. My deeper engagement in the global business is a natural progression, given our continued growth over the last couple of years and the opportunities in the US, Europe, China, and Southeast Asia,” he had recently told Business Standard.