OYO The Biggest Startup Scam Of The Last Decade ?

OYO - Gurugram-headquartered hospitality giant which started it's business as budget hotel chain has now grown into a massive real-estate company.Being one of the few globally recognized Indian startups OYO was recently in news because of all unpleasant reasons like Unpaid dues, Frauds, Defaulted Payments, Faulty tech, wrong listings, layoffs, police cases and what not...

• What's the story ?

Starting as a budget hotel chain to being a real estate company with businesses ranging from hospitality to coworking to cloud kitchen to coffee chain, OYO has had an eventful journey and it aims to be the world's largest hotel chain by 2023.Multiple experts have argued that Oyo’s business model resembles WeWork’s as a tech-inflected real estate business that has expanded far beyond its initial concept.

Over the last year, several news portal has reported about Oyo’s unpaid dues to hoteliers, protests against the company and police complaints. The latest report by the New York Times has now reported that former employees have alleged a “toxic” work culture. At the same time, several other hoteliers, former and current employees have reportedly alleged that Oyo offers rooms from unavailable hotels, etc.
In a recent experienced, Mr. Avigyan Kundu a student from Temple city Bhubaneswar booked a hotel on OYO and later found out that the Hotel is been closed for months.When we tried to reach the hotel owner; he said he is quite unhappy about OYO because of their pending payments.Another hotel owner from Kolkata said he is willing to switch and looking for options as OYO allows higher number of bookings than its inventory causing a severe damage of the Hotels' reputation as the hotel has to deny check-ins because of unavailability of rooms. 
In a recent article, New York Times report showed Oyo rents rooms for free to police officials to avoid troubles

• What's Next ?

OYO as a group aims to turn profitable in 2022. The company is expecting $285.9 Mn in losses for 2020 but aims to turn a profit of $45.2 Mn in 2022. Now the question remains with challenges like unhappy customers to frustrated Hotel owners how this home grown unicorn make this happen ?

Have you ever faced any trouble booking your stay from OYO let us know in the comment section below.