OYO IPO 2026: Is the Market Looking at a Different Company This Time?

Ask most investors what they think about OYO and you'll get one of two reactions. Either the name brings back memories of 2019 — a $10 billion valuation, SoftBank billions, Ritesh Agarwal on every magazine cover — or it triggers the aftermath: mass layoffs, a DRHP that lapsed, a valuation written down to a fraction of the peak.

Both of those things happened. But neither tells you what OYO looks like heading into 2026.

The company working its way toward a listing now has filed its third DRHP — this time targeting $7–8 billion, nearly three times the valuation of its December 2023 attempt. It closed a $525 million acquisition of the Motel 6 and Studio 6 chains in the US. It posted its first annual profit. And it navigated a governance controversy significant enough that the proposal was eventually withdrawn following investor scrutiny. Quiet, this story is not.

Last updated: May 2026

OYO IPO: Key Details at a Glance

Parameter	Detail
Company	Oravel Stays Limited (OYO)
Founded	2012 (rebranded to OYO 2013)
Peak Valuation	$10 billion (2019)
First DRHP Filed	October 2021 — ₹8,430 crore raise; lapsed
Second DRHP Filed	December 2023 — ₹4,286 crore (₹1,286 Cr fresh + ₹3,000 Cr OFS); lapsed
Third DRHP Filed	January 1, 2026 (confidential) — ₹6,650 crore, all fresh issue
Target Valuation (2026)	$7–8 billion
Revenue (FY24)	₹5,388 crore
Net Profit (FY24)	₹229 crore — first annual profit in company history
Q1 FY26 Revenue	₹7,227 crore (+47% YoY) — post Motel 6 consolidation
Primary Shareholder	SoftBank (~47%)
Founder Stake	Ritesh Agarwal (~33%)
Lead Bankers	Goldman Sachs, ICICI Securities, Axis Capital, Citibank
IPO Status	Third confidential pre-filing with SEBI; no listing date confirmed

The founding story — and one decision that still follows Ritesh Agarwal around

Agarwal was 19 when he started OYO Rooms from Titilagarh, Odisha. He skipped Stanford, won a Thiel Fellowship, and built something no one had quite tried before in Indian hospitality: a franchise model where hotel owners kept their properties but OYO handled pricing, branding, and demand. By 2019, it was in 800+ Indian cities and 35+ countries.

But 2019 is also the year something else happened that investors have never fully let go of. Agarwal borrowed around $2 billion — SoftBank arranged the financing — to buy back shares from early investors Lightspeed and Sequoia. His stake went from roughly 10% to around 33%. The logic was control. The consequence was personal debt tied directly to OYO's performance, and it surfaces in every IPO conversation.

When OYO's valuation fell sharply over the next few years, that decision looked very different. Institutional diligence teams haven't stopped asking whether Agarwal's incentives around timing and pricing are fully aligned with public market investors. The alignment is substantial, though institutional investors continue to scrutinize the incentives created by the financing structure.

What kind of company is OYO, exactly?

This sounds like a basic question. It's actually the hardest one to answer about OYO — and it matters more than most coverage acknowledges.

Is it a hotel aggregator? A travel-tech platform? A franchise business? A managed inventory play? Each gets valued differently, and OYO sits awkwardly across all of them. Here's what is clear: OYO historically didn't own any hotels. Its revenue came from franchise fees, management commissions, and platform services — closer to a software-and-brand business than a hospitality operator, which would normally mean higher multiples.

The Motel 6 acquisition complicates that picture. For the first time, OYO is the owner of a physical hotel brand — roughly 1,500 properties under the Motel 6 and Studio 6 names across the US. That's a direct-ownership model layered onto an asset-light franchise base. How investors should think about the blended entity isn't obvious, and OYO doesn't have an obvious Indian listed comparable to anchor a multiple against.

The current India portfolio spans four formats: OYO Hotels & Homes (core network), Townhouse (upper-budget, longer stays), Collection O (premium budget), and Palette Resorts (leisure). Each segment serves a different customer. Together they make OYO hard to benchmark — which gives both bulls and bears more room to argue their case.

Three DRHPs: what changed each time

OYO has now attempted to list three times, and the evolution across those attempts tells you more about the company than any single filing would.

The first DRHP came in October 2021 at ₹8,430 crore, targeting roughly $9 billion. The environment was still generous — capital was cheap, losses were forgiven if growth was large enough, and OYO was one of India's most prominent startup names. SEBI asked hard questions about related-party transactions and the Agarwal buyback structure. The process slowed, then stalled. The 12-month observation window expired. The filing lapsed.

The second DRHP in December 2023 came in at ₹4,286 crore and an implied valuation of ~$2.7 billion — a 70% reduction from 2021. Most of that ₹4,286 crore was structured as an OFS: ₹3,000 crore for selling shareholders (primarily SoftBank), with only ₹1,286 crore as fresh capital for OYO itself. That filing also lapsed — superseded by the third.

The third DRHP, filed confidentially on January 1, 2026, is structurally different from both. It targets ₹6,650 crore — all as a fresh issue. There is no OFS. Current reporting suggests SoftBank is not participating in an OFS. The entire capital raised goes to OYO: debt repayment, Motel 6 integration costs, and growth. The target valuation is $7–8 billion, up from $2.7 billion in the second attempt.

That valuation jump needs explaining, and the explanation is largely Motel 6. The revenue base has expanded dramatically. Reported Q1 FY26 revenue reached ₹7,227 crore — up 47% year-on-year — driven by full consolidation of the US acquisition. The FY25 profitability trajectory is also accelerating. So while $7–8 billion sounds aggressive against the $2.7 billion that lapsed, the underlying business is materially larger than it was when that second DRHP was filed.

The CCPS controversy — and why it matters for governance

In 2024, OYO proposed a bonus share scheme under its CCPS (Compulsorily Convertible Preference Shares) structure that immediately attracted criticism. The proposal involved a two-tier system: certain shareholders would receive bonus shares at a significantly higher ratio than others. Critics — including institutional investors and governance watchdogs — flagged it as a mechanism to consolidate founder control without proportional benefit to all shareholders.

The proposal attracted governance scrutiny from investors and regulators. Under pressure, OYO withdrew the two-tier proposal entirely in November 2025. It was replaced with a universal 1:1 bonus share for all shareholders — a clean structure with no preferential treatment.

The episode is resolved. But it matters because governance controversies tend to travel through SEBI's institutional memory. The first DRHP got held up partly for governance reasons. The CCPS episode was a second mark in the same column. The third DRHP will be reviewed against that backdrop, and the answers to diligence questions need to be better than they were in 2021.

The Motel 6 bet: international, again

OYO acquired Motel 6 and Studio 6 from Blackstone for $525 million, closing in December 2024. The deal brought roughly 1,500 properties across the US and approximately $1.7 billion in gross revenue into OYO's portfolio.

This is OYO's most consequential international bet — and it's structurally different from what came before. Earlier international expansions across Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East were largely franchise or asset-light plays. They were also largely abandoned, leaving losses in the financials and questions about OYO's ability to run a global business.

Motel 6 is different in one important way: it's a 60-year-old American brand with genuine consumer recall in the budget-motel segment. OYO isn't entering the US market cold — it's acquiring established infrastructure and a brand that already has occupancy. The bet is that OYO's demand optimization and tech stack can improve yields on properties that Blackstone had been running with older operational methods.

The financial impact is already visible. Reported Q1 FY26 revenue was ₹7,227 crore — +47% year-on-year — with Motel 6 now fully consolidated. OYO's revenue base has fundamentally changed in scale. Whether the margins follow is what investors will be watching most closely.

The risk is real too. Running 1,500 physical properties across the US is a different operational challenge than managing a franchise network. And the history of Indian companies making large-ticket US acquisitions and delivering on the integration thesis is not encouraging. OYO will need to demonstrate that Motel 6 is accretive to margins — not just to revenue — before the IPO story fully holds.

Where the numbers have actually gone

The financial story looks worse before it looks better, which is why it's worth laying out in sequence.

Period	Revenue (₹ crore)	Profit / Loss (₹ crore)	What was happening
FY22	4,905	Loss: 2,074	Post-COVID recovery just beginning; losses still severe
FY23	5,464	Loss: 1,286	Revenue grows, losses narrow by nearly half
FY24	5,388	Profit: 229	First annual net profit in company history; unprofitable markets exited
FY25 (full year)	Significantly higher	Some reports estimate ~₹700 crore PAT	Motel 6 consolidates Q4; profitability accelerates
Q1 FY26	7,227	PAT: 200+ crore	Full Motel 6 contribution; +47% YoY revenue growth

The FY24 revenue dip compared to FY23 is worth understanding rather than just flagging as a negative. OYO deliberately exited unprofitable international markets and renegotiated minimum guarantee contracts. Revenue fell slightly. Margins improved significantly. That's a deliberate trade-off — one the old OYO would never have made.

The FY25 trajectory is the more important data point for the 2026 IPO. If reports estimating ~₹700 crore PAT for FY25 prove accurate, that's not just sustained profitability — it's accelerating profitability. Reported Q1 FY26 figures — 200+ crore PAT on ₹7,227 crore of revenue — suggest the Motel 6 integration is adding to the profit picture, not just to revenue.

SoftBank owns ~47% — and current reporting suggests no OFS

This is the most significant structural change from the December 2023 filing to the January 2026 one, and it doesn't get enough attention.

In the second DRHP, ₹3,000 crore of the ₹4,286 crore raise was an OFS — most of it SoftBank taking money off the table. Retail investors buying into that IPO would have been primarily funding SoftBank's exit. The fresh capital for OYO itself was only ₹1,286 crore.

The third pre-filing flips that entirely. All ₹6,650 crore is a fresh issue. Current reporting suggests SoftBank is not participating in an OFS. The entire raise goes to OYO — debt reduction, Motel 6 integration, and growth capital. From a retail investor's perspective, you're not funding someone else's exit. You're funding the company.

The absence of an OFS may suggest confidence in post-listing upside, or simply reduced urgency for liquidity compared to earlier filings. Either reading is more favorable than the alternative — a distressed seller trying to exit at any price.

The risks worth paying attention to

Motel 6 integration is the biggest unknown. The revenue impact is already visible. The margin impact is not yet clear. Running 1,500 US properties is operationally intensive, and OYO's track record in international markets — before Motel 6 — is not reassuring. This acquisition could be the thing that makes the $7–8B valuation work, or the thing that complicates it.

Three DRHPs plus the CCPS controversy is a governance audit trail. Each lapsed filing and the withdrawn CCPS proposal will be part of SEBI's review context for the third. The answers have to be meaningfully better than they were in 2021. The CCPS resolution was the right move — but it happened under pressure, which is a different thing from proactive governance reform.

Will the profitability hold? FY24's ₹229 crore profit came in a good travel environment. Hospitality is cyclical. The business hasn't been tested at the profitability level through a full downcycle yet, and public markets will price that uncertainty in.

Agarwal's personal position. The $2 billion buyback debt doesn't disappear at IPO — it gets resolved through it. Agarwal has an incentive to get the listing done at the best price possible. That's mostly aligned with investors, but not perfectly, and institutional diligence teams will keep probing it.

Budget travel is competitive. MakeMyTrip's hotel supply side, Treebo, FabHotels — OYO isn't the only option for budget hotel owners looking for distribution. Partner churn is a real variable.

What the $7–8 billion price tag is assuming

At $7–8 billion, the market is being asked to believe: Motel 6 transforms OYO's revenue scale and is accretive to margins; FY25 profitability trajectory holds and continues; governance history from three DRHP attempts and the CCPS episode is resolved to SEBI's satisfaction; and SoftBank staying in is a sign of genuine confidence, not lack of alternatives.

That's a lot of assumptions. And the history here is unforgiving — the 2021 filing assumed $9 billion and lapsed, the 2023 filing assumed $2.7 billion and lapsed. The third attempt at $7–8 billion is either the one that finally happens, or another reset waiting to unfold.

The case for the bulls: the business is materially larger (Motel 6 doubled the revenue base), the profitability story is real and accelerating, and the IPO structure is cleaner (no OFS). That combination didn't exist in either of the first two filings.

The case for skeptics: three lapsed or superseded filings in five years, a governance controversy that required public withdrawal, and a large international acquisition whose integration risk hasn't fully played out yet.

OYO unlisted shares trade in the private market, giving some sense of where sophisticated buyers currently peg the value — though unlisted pricing is thin and doesn't reflect a regulated exchange valuation.

What the market is still deciding

OYO's recovery is real. Thousands of people lost jobs. International markets were abandoned. Partner contracts were torn up and rewritten. A governance proposal had to be pulled back. It wasn't pretty — but the company that comes out of all that is more focused and more honest about what it actually is than the version that tried to list in 2021.

The 2026 version of this story is genuinely different from what came before: profitable, significantly larger in revenue scale, and structured in a way that puts all the IPO proceeds to work inside the business. Those aren't small things.

Whether the market agrees that $7–8 billion is the right number for all of that — that's what SEBI's review and eventual price discovery will settle. Public markets have a way of making that test feel harder than private ones ever did.

“Public markets have a way of making that test feel harder than private ones ever did.”

One of India's most delayed startup IPOs is also its most instructive. OYO was never going to disappear — the question was always whether it could grow up. The answer, slowly, is yes. Whether the market agrees with the price is a different conversation entirely.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is OYO's expected IPO valuation in 2026?
OYO's third DRHP, filed confidentially on January 1, 2026, targets a valuation of $7–8 billion. This is a significant step up from the ~$2.7 billion implied by the December 2023 filing, largely driven by the Motel 6 acquisition (closed December 2024) and accelerating profitability. Unlisted market pricing varies and does not reflect a regulated exchange valuation.

When is the OYO IPO expected?
OYO filed its third DRHP with SEBI in January 2026 on a confidential basis. As of mid-2026, no official listing date has been confirmed. The timeline depends on SEBI's review process and market conditions at the time OYO chooses to proceed.

Is OYO profitable?
Yes. OYO reported its first annual net profit of ₹229 crore in FY24 — a milestone after years of losses that peaked at ₹2,074 crore in FY22. FY25 profitability is projected to accelerate significantly, with full-year PAT estimated around ₹700 crore, and Q1 FY26 PAT already 200+ crore.

What is the Motel 6 acquisition?
OYO acquired the Motel 6 and Studio 6 hotel chains from Blackstone for $525 million, closing in December 2024. The deal brought approximately 1,500 properties and roughly $1.7 billion in gross annual revenue into OYO's portfolio. It is OYO's largest-ever acquisition and fundamentally changes the company's revenue scale — Q1 FY26 revenue hit ₹7,227 crore (+47% YoY) on the back of full Motel 6 consolidation.

What was the OYO CCPS controversy?
In 2024, OYO proposed a two-tier bonus share scheme under its CCPS structure that would have given certain shareholders a significantly higher bonus ratio than others — effectively concentrating control with insiders. The proposal attracted governance scrutiny from institutional investors, governance watchdogs, and regulators. OYO withdrew it in November 2025 and replaced it with a universal 1:1 bonus share for all shareholders.

Why did OYO's previous DRHPs lapse?
The first DRHP (October 2021, ₹8,430 crore) lapsed after SEBI raised questions on related-party transactions and auditor qualifications that OYO didn't address within the 12-month observation window. The second DRHP (December 2023, ₹4,286 crore) was superseded by the third filing in January 2026 before it could proceed to listing.

Who owns OYO, and is SoftBank selling at IPO?
SoftBank holds approximately 47%, making it the largest shareholder. Founder Ritesh Agarwal holds around 33%, built partly through a $2 billion share buyback from early investors in 2019. Based on current reporting, the January 2026 pre-filing contains no Offer for Sale — SoftBank is not participating in an OFS. All ₹6,650 crore raised goes to OYO as fresh capital.

Can retail investors buy OYO shares before the IPO?
OYO shares are available in the unlisted market, but the risks are real — no regulatory oversight, limited liquidity, and prices that have moved significantly since the 2019 peak. Track OYO and other pre-IPO companies on our unlisted companies page. If you're new to how these transactions work, read our guide on how unlisted share transfers work in India.

All data in this article is sourced from public filings, regulatory disclosures, and reported news. Nothing here constitutes investment advice. OYO is a pre-IPO company; its shares are not traded on a regulated exchange. Please consult a SEBI-registered investment advisor before making any investment decisions.

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