OYO elevates Rohit Kapoor to global chief marketing officer

Global travel tech major, OYO, has announced that it is elevating Rohit Kapoor to a global role as the company’s marketing head, from his current position of CEO–India and Southeast Asia. 

The company also announced that its global chief business officer, Ankit Tandon, will take on the additional responsibility of Southeast Asia (SEA) with specific focus on Indonesia and the Middle East (ME) region as its CEO.

Ankit Gupta, currently the CEO of Hotels and Homes - India will take on the role of CEO - India. All three leaders will report to the founder and Group CEO, Ritesh Agarwal.

Kapoor, Tandon and Gupta will take on their new responsibilities effective April 1, 2022.

In his new role, Kapoor will focus on lifting the brand persona of OYO, to a more aspirational and loved consumer-tech brand and increase its affinity to strategically important customer cohorts such as family and leisure travellers and corporate customers, while strengthening the value proposition for OYO’s core audience base of SMB guests and millennials. Kapoor will also focus on introducing the OYO brand to its European vacation homes business where the company currently uses multiple brands across the various north European countries it operates in.

Tandon has been given charge of one of OYO’s core regions, south-east Asia which focuses on high growth markets of Indonesia and Malaysia along with other Southeast Asian and Middle East countries which he was already leading in partnership with Amit Gupta. Hence Tandon’s role will expand to CEO - SEA and ME. He will enable this along with his role as chief business officer where he has been instrumental in strategic priorities such as M A and Business Performance Management.

In his existing role as CEO – INSEA, Kapoor has been instrumental in transforming the INSEA business during the tough period of COVID. Under his leadership, OYO was a front mover in many initiatives which continued to build OYO as a loved brand for patrons and customers.

“Kapoor played a critical role in OYO’s business model transformation through the last two years due to which the company improved its contribution margins from 5% to 18%. He also successfully rallied the teams to support their family, friends and hotel partners during the devastating waves of the pandemic while ensuring the organization remained strongly knit and highly motivated,” the company said in a statement.

Gupta has led significant growth in OYO’s key brands such as OYO Townhouse over the last two years in spite of the pandemic, growing them to more than 40% of OYO India’s overall hotels and homes business. In his new role, he will focus on growing OYO India’s business as the travel industry rebounds.

“Rohit has proven to be a tremendous asset for OYO. He has consistently demonstrated his acumen of rejuvenating and transforming every business that he has led for the company. As a product tech direct to consumer company, a strong and vibrant brand is one of the two most important factors which will define our success. We will be banking on him to uplift brand and marketing through his exceptional first-principles approach and his deep understanding of OYO as a business operator,” said Agarwal on the transitions.

“Ankit Tandon will provide impetus to the high potential SEA market, as it emerges from the covid induced lockdowns. Given his body of experience starting and scaling many business components at OYO such as our mid-segment hotels business, I am confident he will add significant value to what we believe is one of the most important regions for OYO. Ankit Gupta has played an instrumental role in growing OYO’s business such as OYO Townhouse, our flagship mid-market brand which customers love. I am confident he will catalyze OYO’s India region growth and take it to new heights. I am looking forward to working closely with all three in their new roles,” he added.

“I have always experienced renewal by taking on new opportunities, often in areas less charted by me. The mandate of sharpening OYO’s brand and marketing function and winning our customer's minds is probably the most stirring role for me to date, since it will allow me to build one of the rare oxymoronic aspirational-budget brands not just in India but across multiple regions globally in world, each of which has a different cultural context in how they will interact with the brand,” said Kapoor expressing his enthusiasm at the fresh opportunity.

“Over the past seven years, I have seen the organization evolve and am proud to have been one of the early members. The various roles over the years such as building important portfolios, including OYO’s mid-segment hotels business with brands such as OYO Townhouse, building the operations capability stack and leading Global Program Management Office (GPMO) to deliver several high impact projects for OYO, have shaped my leadership skills. I have learnt to build and lead strong teams, scale businesses quickly, and deliver operating efficiency through technology in a complex fast-growing business. In my new role, I am excited to partner with the SEA & ME team and all leaders to deliver this year’s plan and set up the market for strong growth in the coming years,” said Tandon.

“My two-year journey at OYO has been highly enriching, as we have transformed ourselves to emerge successfully out of the pandemic. Our deep focus on delivering distinctive customer and patron experience has enabled us to emerge even stronger in tech-enabled innovation for the ecosystem. I am excited to partner with the OYO India team to deliver high profitable growth going forward,” added Gupta.