The board of Oravel Stays, which owns and operates Oyo Hotels & Homes, has cleared a $1.5 billion primary capital infusion into the company by its largest institutional stakeholder SoftBank Vision Fund and RA Hospitality.
In a special resolution passed at an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders, SVF India Holdings Cayman Islands-registered entities, has been issued 15,325 Series F compulsorily convertible preference shares at a price of $52,643.22 a share, while RA Hospitality, the special purpose vehicle also domiciled in the Cayman Islands, has been issued 13,169 equity shares, at the same price, according to a note by paper.vc. This is as per a report by the Economic Times.
The development comes a little over a month after the SoftBank-backed company stated that its founder and Group Chief Executive Ritesh Agarwal would invest $700 million into the company he founded in 2013, with the rest coming in from its largest investor SoftBank and other unnamed investors.
Post the closure of the transaction, Agarwal will hold 18.03% of the company, up from his pre-investment holding of 9.43%. Last month, ET had reported that Agarwal’s investment is being financed by the $2-2.2 billion debt he had raised from a consortium of Japanese financial institutions, including Nomura Holdings and Mizuho.
This debt financing involves the 26-year-old group CEO pledging his stake in the company, with a substantial portion expected to be used to partially buy out the stakes held by two early investors in Oyo — venture capital firms Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital.
The multi layered transaction has set a new valuation benchmark —$10 billion— for the six-year-old company.
A significant portion of the funding raised by Oyo is like to go toward growing its business in the US. In June, ET reported that the company had committed to invest $300 million over the next few years in the world’s largest consumer market.
Additionally, Oravel Stays has also set up two joint ventures in India, with an entity – SB Topaz – controlled by SoftBank.
Of the two JV entities – Mountainia Developers and Hospitality Pvt Ltd and MyPreferred Transformation and Hospitality Pvt Ltd – the former has been set up to acquire hotels-related real estate assets, ranging from land parcels to fully-developed properties.