Dubai-based Gallery Suites has announced its intention make an open offer to OYO Hotels & Homes, one of the fastest growing tech start-ups in hospitality, to buy the latter’s Home Division, a statement said.

 

“In light of the recent developments related to Oyo, Khurram Shroff, Chairman of IBC Group and Gallery Suites, has reached out to OYO Hotels & Homes and all its employees, with a plan for funding and restructuring the hospitality brand,” said the statement.

 

OYO Hotels & Homes, one of the fastest growing tech start-ups in hospitality, has had to scale back expansion recently. 

 

Shroff has reached out to the founder and CEO of OYO Hotels & Homes, Ritesh Agarwal, to help him restructure and showcase the company’s strengths, the statement said. 

 

Shroff’s Gallery Suites Vacation Rentals had announced in August 2019 that it had tied up with OYO Rooms in a Dh18 billion deal to manage around 10,000 holiday homes in India and the UAE, a contract which is now being restructured. 

 

“The Gallery Suites team has been working closely with OYO Hotels & Homes over the last year and has developed a good relationship with the company and several of its staff. As an entrepreneur who is active in the short-term rentals and holiday homes space, which OYO has also been involved in, Mr. Shroff is a great supporter and champion of the concept and believes in the Oyo brand. To this end, he believes that his initiative can help the employees, along with his open offer to buy out the home division instead of going in for a partnership,” the statement said. 

 

“We (Gallery Suites) are restructuring the contract with OYO to just have an OTA relationship because they have 40 million users on their app, so they are going to just provide us their demand of users. Our intention is to find positives in the emerging circumstances, by issuing an open letter to hire their employees, and possibly an open letter to purchase OYO’s Home Division,” Shroff said.

 

Commending OYO on having done a spectacular job in the past, Shroff is proposing to take on employees who might otherwise find their services superfluous to the new structure. The aim behind this offer is to support the employees, as well to help OYO Hotels & Homes strengthen its position at this time, the statement said.

 

“We will join hands with these thousands of deserving employees – offering them jobs with Gallery Suites in India and UAE,” he said, adding that they had “received over 350 applications from all around the world”.

 

Gallery Suites Vacation Rentals is a subsidiary of the IBC Group Limited, an investment company based in the UAE since 2014, with a focus on private equity investment in real estate, art and proptech. Gallery Suites already has a substantial presence in Dubai and has over 200 properties in JLT, JBR, Palm Jumeirah and Dubai Marina. – TradeArabia News Service