Software major Microsoft in advanced talks to invest in Indian hotel chain Oyo at a $9 billion valuation as part of a Cloud deal, TechCrunch reported.
The deal could be announced in the coming weeks and would be a prelude to an initial public offering (IPO) by Oyo, Reuters reported.
Oyo Founder and Chief Executive Officer Ritesh Agarwal said earlier this month that Oyo would consider a potential public offering, but did not provide a timeline.
The deal may involve Oyo shifting to use Microsoft’s cloud services.
Oyo is one of India’s largest startups. Founded in 2013, Oyo aggregates bookings for budget hotels around the world.
The hotel aggregator, in which SoftBank Group owns 46 percent stake and is one of its biggest bets, has endured months of layoffs, cost cuts and losses since the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak last year.
Leading cloud providers in Q2 2021 are Amazon with 33 percent share, Microsoft with 20 percent share, Google with 10 percent share, Alibaba with 6 percent share, IBM with 4 percent share, Salesforce with 3 percent share, Tencent with 2 percent share and Oracle with 2 percent share.
John Dinsdale, Chief Analyst at Synergy Research, said: “Amazon, Microsoft and Google in are typically investing over $25 billion in capex per quarter, much of which is going towards building and equipping their fleet of over 340 hyperscale data centers.”
