Layoffs, rejig one-time exercise, will be over soon: Oyo CEO

Some parts of Oyo Hotels & Homes weren’t probably ready for the pace of growth it has witnessed and the hospitality chain is trying to address such issues this year, says its new chief executive for India and South Asia, Rohit Kapoor in an exclusive interview to The Economic Times. While confirming reports of job cuts at the company, he tells Anumeha Chaturvedi that it is asking about 15-20% of its 12,000 employees to go in a “one-time exercise” that “is going to end very soon”. There is no  deadline from Japanese investor SoftBank to report operational profitability on some businesses, he says, and adds that the management is committed to improving relations with hotel partners.

Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal has reportedly said the company is asking some of its employees to move to a new career. What explains this?
The question that whether some staff members are being asked to go is correct. Over the last one and a half years, there has been an increase in revenue to about 3x, and we had 1-million-plus rooms globally by the end of 2019. But I don’t think we have any hesitation in admitting that growing at the pace that we did over the last three years, we did sometimes go ahead of ourselves … What we mean is that maybe all parts of the organisation were not ready for that pace of growth and that scale of  of operations, and 2020 is the year when we are taking active steps to address this. We have a clear roadmap for continuing to drive success for Oyo for this year and beyond based on factors like sustainable growth.