OYO Acquires Weddingz.in, set to become India’s #1 Banquet Management Company

Amidst achieving the milestone of adding 100,000 exclusive - franchised and leased - rooms to its hotel chain while witnessing rapid expansion in China, OYO hotels has today announced the acquisition of Weddingz.in, India’s largest wedding banquet company. The acquisition is a bold step towards OYO expanding its playfield to real estate sector and realizing its vision of becoming a global real estate brand while continuing its dominance on India's hotel market.

Over the last five years, OYO - India’s Leading Hotel Chain, has built and demonstrated deep capabilities in partnering with various formats of real estate and rapidly transforming them into quality and beautiful living spaces. Driving innovation, efficiency and distribution to enhance business and yield, OYO successfully operates these spaces with the consistent quality of award-winning service delivery while leveraging technology. Weddings banquets, being a fragmented, low yield, broken customer service business is a befitting opportunity for OYO to use these capabilities and create a dominant brand in this industry.

Globally, the wedding industry has grown to become a $500 Billion market and OYO's sharp focus on global expansion will support its debut in disrupting these markets. Commenting on the development, Maninder Gulati, Chief Strategy Officer – OYO, said, “It’s thrilling that our very first acquisition in the wedding segment involves a celebrated and loved brand, Weddingz.in. What this partnership facilitates is combining OYO’s capabilities of asset management and technology with the scale Weddingz.in offers in India’s fragmented $40bn weddings industry. The company has a healthy scale of managing 1,500-plus wedding events per quarter, with an inventory size of over 40 banquets spread across Mumbai and Delhi. At OYO, our experience ranges from end-to-end management of homes, villas, small asset to hotels with 100+ rooms while running successful businesses for our asset partners and all these facets will be of utmost importance while operating in the wedding industry that in the dire need of fundamental changes and improvements.’’

With more than 10 million marriages in India held annually, the segment holds immense potential for innovation, improvement and standardization of processes. Organizing a wedding is a goliath task and OYO aims to introduce efficiency and streamlining the process by offering a one-stop platform for all the needs, including beautiful and spacious venues, decorations, catering and a dedicated wedding planner so families can enjoy this crucial milestone in a hassle-free manner.

“Weddingz.in is India’s largest banquet management company specializing in weddings led by an extremely ambitious founder Sandeep Lodha and his talented team and the value proposition they bring to the table via skills in managing weddings is clearly visible in their dominance and popularity. We could sense the synergies from day one and are thrilled to welcome the team to the OYO family.’’ added Maninder.

Sandeep Lodha, Founder, Weddingz.in, commented, ‘’We are delighted to join forces with OYO in its mission of creating quality and beautiful spaces. Weddingz.in was started with a similar mission of adding value to the wedding planning experience of people while introducing a structure to the industry and how banquets operated in the past and we’ve successfully achieved that in the past 3 years. In the coming months, we'll expand the offering to other cities in India and later to global markets. This alliance will work towards simplifying wedding planning for Indians while tapping the enormous opportunities this space offers.''