Oyo India chief, Europe head quit amid public listing deliberation

Two senior executives at Oyo have left the budget-hospitality startup, mere months before the company plans to list.

Ankit Gupta, who joined the unicorn startup in 2019 and served as its India chief executive, and Mandar Vaidya, who led the startup’s European business, have left the firm. In a statement, an Oyo spokesperson said the executives departed six months ago.

Their departures come at a time when Oyo — backed by SoftBank, Lightspeed and Peak XV — has delayed its listing plans multiple times — factoring in the ongoing market conditions — and is currently slated to go ahead with it later this year.

Oyo originally filed paperwork to go public in October 2021, when it was seeking to raise as much as $1.6 billion from the listing at a valuation of about $12 billion. It has since postponed the plans and pared down the target raise to about $600 million in a listing currently slated for November.

The executives’ departure is the latest in a series of not-so-favorable developments for Oyo, which was once valued at $10 billion. SoftBank, the largest investor in Oyo, last year marked down the value of its holding in the startup, giving it a valuation of $2.7 billion.

Indian outlet The Arc first reported about the departures.

Oyo has raised $3.23 billion in equity (primary + secondary) and debt funding rounds over the years, according to insight platform Tracxn.

An Oyo spokesperson said in a statement Wednesday that Varun Jain, as COO of Oyo India, and Gautam Swaroop, as CEO of Oyo Vacation Homes, took over the roles left by Gupta and Vaidya.