Business
Has IPO-bound OYO regained trust of its hotel partners?
As travel tech major OYO prepares for its much-awaited public listing, the continued satisfaction of its hotel partners and winning back dissatisfied partners will play a key role in determining how its business performs and, by extension, how its stock holds up.
The company has recently been affected by some of its hotel partners publicly complaining, filing cases and even writing to the regulator.
The moot question here is: Has IPO-bound OYO regained the trust of its hotel partners which it also addresses as Patrons?
Let’s take a closer look at its patron policies through its draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) filed with SEBI.
With over 157,000 storefronts worldwide, the 40 reported cases against the company or its directors translate to less than 0.02 per cent of its storefronts. OYO sources say that majorly of these originate due to shifting from minimum guarantee to revenue sharing arrangement. As per DRHP, at its peak, 14.7 per cent hotels had minimum guarantee. This number is down to nearly zero now.
After bingeing on growth and expansion, the company seems to have refocused its priority to course correct on the hotel partner front.
Revenue growth is by far the biggest and most meaningful value proposition that OYO claims to provide its hotel partners worldwide. Its DRHP tries to prove it by showing the median revenue growth for a storefront after 12 weeks of a hotel joining the OYO platform.
The highest revenue uplift for storefronts is in the European Vacation Homes Business at 2.4 times, while India is still at a healthy 1.9 times increase in revenue.
The platform has several revenue enhancement tools, including machine-learning based dynamic pricing algorithms which use hundreds of parameters such as the supply and demand, seasonality and local trends to arrive at the optimal real-time price for a room and thus maximising partner revenues.
Another pricing tool is the Tariff Manager, which gives partners control over pricing based on their understanding of potential local demand. Currently, 45 per cent of OYO hotels use a tariff manager on a monthly basis globally.
It has introduced a prepaid e-wallet to simplify revenue collection and reconciliation process and moved from a monthly reconciliation process to now offering hotel partners daily payouts to improve their working capital flow.
It does consistent engagement with partners now via regular town halls. All of this has led to an increase in Patron satisfaction score from 30.1 per cent for the three months ended September 30, 2020, to a healthier 72.3 per cent for the three months ended March 31, 2021.
OYO now has over 2,700 hotel partners with more than one property signed up on its platforms. For India, this translates to 9.5 per cent of the hotel owners.
New hotels are joining the OYO platform via a self-onboarding tool, ‘OYO 360′, which automatically generates digital contracts based on property details and KYC documents provided by hotel partners.
In fiscal 2021, almost all the company’s contracts with new hotel Partners were signed and managed digitally, says the DRHP.
However, OYO still hasn’t been able to assuage all of its sceptics. Some traditional hoteliers still believe that the model of offering season wise pricing with minor discounts is the only way to keep the small hotels category viable.
Few others are still to come to terms with the abolition of the minimum guarantees which gave them certainty of revenues and are still in courts demanding compensation. There are signs of thawing though; according to company sources, close to 1,300 hotel partners facing issues in the past have joined back.
Given the buoyant IPO market, OYO’s public offering may sail through successfully, but the continued partner satisfaction will have a huge impact on its growth and hence its stock performance. A point OYO’s founder Ritesh Agarwal would do well to take note of.
Business
US flight disruption: Air India advises passengers to check latest status

New Delhi : Air India on Saturday advised passengers to check the latest status of their flights and plan their journey to the airport accordingly, amid massive disruption at the US airports. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lifted a nationwide ground stop that had halted departures at US airports after a communications failure, though airlines warned that disruption and cancellations could continue.
“A nationwide ground stop is currently in effect across the US due to communication outages affecting air traffic operations. As a result, departures from airports across US are impacted, with possible consequential disruptions to Air India flights to and from the US,” Air India said in a statement posted on X. “Our teams continue to closely monitor the situation and will share updates as available,” it added. The cancellation of US flights happened after a communications problem affected air traffic operations. The notice announcing the cancellation did not specify the cause of the failure or say that airline schedules had returned to normal.
Earlier, the FAA’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center said the ground stop remained in effect across a large portion of the country, although some coastal facilities had been able to release international departures. In an update, American Airlines said some flights from certain airports were beginning to receive clearance to depart. At that point, most departures remained paused, and the airline expected further disruption, including unavoidable cancellations. American advised customers to check their flight status and review its travel alert for options. Its warning was issued before the FAA’s cancellation advisory. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters earlier that officials had acted as a precaution following a telecommunications outage affecting the FAA. “There is no indication as of yet that this was a nefarious attack,” he said at the time. That preliminary assessment did not rule out a cyberattack.
General
FBI warns AI tool can speed up cyberattacks

Washington : The FBI has warned that cybercriminals are using an artificial intelligence-assisted security testing tool to accelerate attacks on organisations around the world, with some intrusions reaching privileged access in less than three hours. In an alert issued on Friday (local time), the bureau said malicious actors had used the open-source framework, known as ARTEX, since at least August to target organisations across sectors including finance, government, technology, defence, energy and health care. The FBI said the tool can automate several stages of an intrusion, from identifying potential targets to preparing or carrying out data theft. That speed can leave defenders less time to detect and respond to an attack, it said.
The alert said some intrusions progressed from initial targeting to privileged access in under three hours. According to the alert, the framework was originally intended for authorised security testing. Its developer removed the original online repository in October following reports of malicious use, but copies and variants remained available, the FBI said. The bureau said the tool could lower the technical barriers for conducting complex operations and allow attackers to pursue multiple targets at the same time. Organisations’ internet-facing applications, cloud infrastructure and systems connected to suppliers or partners were among the areas of concern identified in the alert.
The FBI cited financially motivated attacks on South Korean financial institutions that it said resulted in personal information being taken from approximately 67,000 people. It also described a separate supply-chain compromise affecting users of a cloud backup service, which it said enabled access to more than 2,250 downstream customer environments. The bureau encouraged organisations to review their exposure to the internet, strengthen identity and access controls, monitor unusual activity and protect credentials. It also urged organisations that identify suspicious activity to contact the FBI or report it through the Internet Crime Complaint Center.
Business
India’s forex reserves climb $2.49 billion to $719.5 billion, gold holdings surge to $104.8 billion

India’s foreign exchange reserves rose by $2.49 billion to reach $719.547 billion in the week ended November 6, according to data released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday.
This increase follows consecutive weeks of decline, during which the reserves had slipped from $722.3 billion in the week ended October 17 to $717.057 billion by October 30.
The uptick in reserves was primarily driven by a sharp rise in gold holdings, which surged by $2.205 billion to $104.796 billion during the week, the RBI data showed.
Foreign currency assets, which form the largest component of India’s forex reserves, also rose by $232 million to $591.350 billion.
These assets are influenced by changes in the value of non-US currencies such as the euro, pound, and yen that are held in the reserves.
India’s Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) with the International Monetary Fund climbed by $52 million to $18.610 billion, while the country’s reserve position with the IMF increased by $1 million to $4.791 billion.
In rupee terms, the country’s total foreign exchange reserves stood at Rs 67,58,986 crore as of November 6.
Notably, the weekly increase in dollar terms came even as the reserves declined by Rs 49,742 crore in rupee terms, as per the data.
India’s forex reserves had previously touched an all-time high of $785.7 billion in the week ended September 4, following significant foreign currency inflows through a special concessional swap scheme for diaspora deposits.
Meanwhile, earlier this month, the central bank eased the foreign exchange reporting requirements for small exporters and importers of services.
Under the amended Foreign Exchange Management (Export and Import of Goods and Services) Regulations, 2026, individual service exporters will be deemed to have submitted the Export Declaration Form (EDF) once they provide the required payment-related information to their authorised dealer bank for crediting the proceeds to their accounts.
For exporters other than resident individuals, the same treatment will apply if the inward remittance for the service is not more than Rs 10 lakh or its equivalent in foreign currency.
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