Aditya Ghosh, the India and South Asia head of hospitality chainOyo Hotels & Homes, has stepped down from his role, and will join its board of directors, a little over a year after the 44-year-old joined the SoftBank-backed company.
Ghosh will be succeeded by Rohit Kapoor, who was heading Oyo’s new real estate business, the Gurugram-based company announced in a prepared statement. Kapoor’s new role will be effective from January.
Ghosh, who had joined the Ritesh Agarwal-founded company in November last year, was, at the time, perceived as one of the most high-profile senior executive hires within the broader startup ecosystem, given his track record of shepherding IndiGo Airlines’ successful initial public offering in 2015, and also leading its operations for about a decade.
The lawyer-turned-airline executive had effectively spent a little less than 13 months as Oyo’s India and South Asia chief executive, but said he will now focus on governance, profitability, communications, consumer experience and security and safety at the seven-year-old company, which has emerged as one of the most richly valued startups from India.
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“It is also a very responsible role to come on to the board… The perspective I hope to bring, is two-fold – One, having run a large, publicly-traded profitable business for a long period of time, and second, having the unique experience of being the person on the board, who would have also run a large region for Oyo, for about a year,” Ghosh told ET in a telephonic chat.
Ghosh is the second new director appointed in less than a month, after Oyo announced that it had inducted Betsy Atkins, chief executive of investment firm Baja Corporation, as an independent director last month. The development comes at a time when Oyo has stated its intention to go publicly trade on the bourses, but is yet to share a date on when that might take place.
“In the mean time, what the management team, and the board is focused on, is how do we put out all the building blocks, which means, great corporate governance, delivering on what we are promising to our consumers, making sure our costs are continuing to get the efficiencies of scale, because we need to grow our revenue and chase profitability. Then we have a good, credible business, which can then be taken public, as and when the board decides,” Ghosh said.
The move also comes after SoftBank, the largest stakeholder in Oyo, has been asking its portfolio companies in India to hunker down and focus on growth, after the debacle surrounding the aborted WeWork IPO that has seen one of the most highly valued startups lose billions in value and availing of a bailout by its investors.
There had been speculation around Ghosh’s departure for the past few months but the company has denied it.
“A combination of what I’ve done previously and what I’ve done in the last one year, the Board and Ritesh (Agarwal) probably saw I was best placed. But, it is, of course, for me to own those stripes going forward,” Ghosh said.
Source: Economic Times
