the presentation covers the topics related to toxic culture at oyo!

1. TOXIC CULTURE
AT OYO
-PREKSHA GARG

2. INTRODUCTION
• Oyo room is India's largest branded network of hotels.
• Oyo Rooms (stylised as OYO), also known as Oyo Homes & Hotels,
is an Indian hotel chain.
• It is the world's third-largest and fastest-growing hospitality chain of
leased and franchised hotels, homes and living spaces.
• Founded in 2013 by Ritesh Agarwal, OYO initially consisted mainly
of budget hotels.
• Over a span of six years, the start-up expanded globally with
thousands of hotels, vacation homes and millions of rooms in
hundreds of cities in India, Malaysia, UAE, Nepal, China, Brazil,
Mexico, UK, Philippines, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Indonesia,
Vietnam, the United States and more.

3. FOUNDER OF OYO
• Ritesh Agarwal is an Indian entrepreneur,
billionaire and the founder and CEO of OYO
Rooms.
• Agarwal started a budget accommodation
portal, Oravel Stays, for booking budget hotels.
• The company was launched as OYO Rooms in
May 2013.
• By September 2018, the company raised $1
billion.
• In July 2019 it was reported that Agarwal
purchased $2 billion in shares in the company,
tripling his stake.
• His net worth in 2019 was estimated to be
approximately $1 billion (INR 7500 crore)
according to IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List.

4. OYO IN INDIA
• OYO’s rise in India was built on practices that were unhealthy for its
organization’s culture.
• OYO offered rooms from unavailable hotels that had left its service. This
has the effect of inflating the number of rooms listed on OYO’s site.
• OYO’s executive acknowledged that, 1000s of rooms offered were from
unlicensed hotels.
• According to the nine current and former employees, to deter trouble from
authorities over the illegal rooms, OYO gives free lodging to Police and
Political personalities.
• According to interview with hotel owners and employees conducted by
Times, OYO also charged extra fee on hotels and declined to pay to the
hotels the full amount.

5. OYO IN INDIA
• Saurabh Sharma, Operations Manager at Oyo (2014 – 2018), said, the company
sometimes deliberately withheld payments from hotel owners — a practice that
half a dozen other current and former employees also acknowledged.
• In once case, OYO pressurized its employees to add new rooms that they added
rooms with no proper services like A/C, water heater and posted fake picture to
impress investors.
• The employees also had to work day and night to meet their deadline and said
“The culture is very toxic.”
• They also conducted surprise raids and seized employee cell phones and records
for evidence.

6. TOXIC CULTURE
• A toxic work culture is one where the workplace is plagued by fighting,
drama and unhappy employees to the point that productivity and the well-
being of the people in the office is affected.
• A toxic workplace is a workplace that is marked by significant drama and
infighting, where personal battles often harm productivity.
• Toxic workplaces are often considered the result of toxic employers and/or
toxic employees who are motivated by personal gain (power, money, fame
or special status), use unethical, mean-spirited and sometimes illegal
means to manipulate and annoy those around them; and whose motives
are to maintain or increase power, money or special status or divert
attention away from their performance shortfalls and misdeeds.
• Toxic workers define relationships with co-workers, not by organizational
structure but by co-workers they favour and those they do not like or trust.

7. TOXIC CULTURE IN OYO
• Oyo offers rooms from unavailable hotels, such as those that have left its
service, according to the company’s chief executive and nine of the current
and former employees.
• Thousands of the rooms are from unlicensed hotels and guesthouses, its
executives have acknowledged.
• To deter trouble from authorities over the illegal rooms, Oyo sometimes
gives free lodging to police and other officials.
• Oyo has also imposed extra fees on hotels and declined to pay the hotels
the full amounts they claimed they were owed, according to interviews with
hotel owners and employees, emails, legal complaints and other
documents viewed by The Times.

8. TOXIC CULTURE IN OYO
• Oyo is part of a group of prominent start-ups that have sprinted to get as big
as possible, fed by money from large investors such as Japanese
conglomerate SoftBank.
• Any fall by Oyo could blight India’s start-up landscape, which has received
billions in foreign capital in recent years, spawning other multibillion-dollar
companies such as ride-hailing firm Ola and digital payments provider Paytm.
• It would also be another black eye for SoftBank, which is Oyo’s biggest
investor and owns half the start-up’s stock. Masayoshi Son, SoftBank’s chief
executive, has hailed Oyo as a jewel of his company’s $100 billion Vision
Fund, even as he recently wrote off billions of dollars on other investments like
WeWork.

9. • According to Mukhopadhyay, it is a bubble that will burst. He also said employees
were under so much pressure to add new rooms that they brought hotels online
that lacked air conditioning, water heaters or electricity.
• He and eight others said their managers had asked them to engage in a monthly
shell game of briefly inserting these unavailable properties into Oyo’s listings —
complete with fake photographs — to help impress investors.
• Softbank refrained from commenting on its most dear investment in OYO
• Mohammad Jahanzeb Gul, joined the start-up initially and also supervised, and
said that “the culture is toxic”.
• Employees started questioning their own integrity and left their jobs at Oyo.
• The founder needs to look into this matter and address it properly to make his
company more successful but not through bribery and in illegal way.

10. SOLUTIONS
• Founder Ritesh Agarwal needs to take measures to control the culture of fast
growing startup soon
• Renovation of employee policies
• Timely payment of hotel fees, strict rules for hotels
• removal of fake listings from the site. Above mentioned are only some of the
temporary solutions which can be used to revamp the culture for certain period
of time
• Permanent and reliable measures are needed to be implemented soon for the
startup to build its image back
• Focus on areas of motivation- Money, Appreciation, Credit
• Team spirit- Create a sense of belonging
• An open Communication space
• Encourage respect and accountability, Change and revamp work ethics

11. CONCLUSION
• People prefer to work with the company having a strong, ethical and positive
work culture.
• Oyo is showing signs of “Toxic Culture” , issues such as poor customer services,
false information and pictures on the site, unlicensed rooms, etc.
• Employees find difficult to work with such culture and thus leave their jobs.
• Thus, founder needs to understand this and try to solve the matter otherwise
they will be surrounded with problems.