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Context is everything.
Detailed stories on technology startups, business and economic current affairs.
Detailed stories on technology startups, business and economic current affairs.
If this was a crime thriller we’d say OYO is using the pandemic to hide bodies. Except this is a story of a desperate startup that drank too much of its own Kool-Aid.
Editor's note: If you are coming into this story for the first time, I’d recommend you read Part 1, where we closed the piece on this cliffhanger: Much of this is by design, said the OYO executive mentioned earlier. “There are a lot of changes taking place at the company,” he said. “Think of it as a second life for OYO, where they are using this pandemic to rid themselves of all of their sins. Thousands of people across operations have been let go. Contracts with partners, many of which were signed at high leases, are being cancelled, saying this is all we have, take it or leave it. You are going to see a very different OYO come out of this pandemic, and if the company is smart it will not repeat its mistakes.” A different OYO? Hard to swallow for those who fell for its spiel the first time around. As for the company getting a second life, it is difficult to envision partners falling for its bait-and-switch tactics again. The key question here is: will OYO manage to make …
The US-Israel campaign has turned Dubai’s strongest tourism months into a stress test for the emirate’s hospitality sector.
A debt-heavy global pivot to modest motels and accounting-led profits define the company now heading to Indian public markets.
For one of the world’s largest and shrewdest investors to entirely skip putting money in the country is a sign of how quickly the nature of the Indian startup ecosystem has changed.
