Indian hotel start-up OYO sees 3-fold revenue jump

Indian hotel start-up OYO, backed by Japan's SoftBank Group, expects revenue to more than treble every year for the next five years, as it expands in India and international markets, a senior company executive said.

OYO's revenue for the fiscal year to end-March 2018 grew to 4.16 billion rupees ($58 million) from 1.2 billion rupees ($16.7 million) a year earlier, and it expects similar growth over the next five years, its Chief Financial Officer Abhishek Gupta told Reuters on Tuesday.

The hotel chain operator's losses widened marginally to 3.6 billion rupees from 3.55 billion rupees a year ago but it expects to turn profitable soon, Gupta said, without giving a timeline.

OYO expects revenue of more than 14 billion rupees for the current financial year ending March, it said in a statement.

OYO, which operates more than 13,000 franchised or leased hotels with over 170,000 rooms in India, China, UK, Dubai, Indonesia and Malaysia, raised $1 billion last year from investors including SoftBank and ride-hailing firm Grab. ($1 = 71.7200 Indian rupees)