In what could perhaps be the most affirming stamp of sorts, to the much rumoured Oyo-Zo deal, Softbank, in its earnings presentation today, has confirmed that Oyo Rooms has acquired Zo Rooms.
The rumoured all-equity acquisition gained fresh flares today, when NextBigWhat first spotted that Zo Rooms’ website and app had stopped functioning. While both platforms did display available hotels, bookings couldn’t be done via the same.
Post Softbank’s official announcement though, both the app and website are back to usual — hinting that while Oyo may have acquired Zo, the latter will continue to function as a separate entity — for the time being at least. We have mailed every entity involved, and will update the story once we receive something official.
Here’s the official announcement from Softbank’s earnings presentation, which can be accessed on our servers, right here (pdf).
Apart from this one slide, Softbank hasn’t said much about Oyo’s overall performance and the financials involved in the deal. Thats usual for the company though, considering that it is an Oyo is an investee company and not a subsidiary.
Interestingly, Softbank has put this acquisition in previous nine months report, signalling that the acquisition had taken place long back, only the announcement remained.
Snapdeal And Ola Maintain Strong Growth
As for Softbank’s investments in Snapdeal and Ola, the Japanese conglomerate highlighted that the former saw a massive 90% YoY increase riding on strong diwali sales, which itself saw a threefold rise as compared to last year. Snapdeal also signed up a staggering 14 million users on the recently launched FreeCharge wallet and now has over 250K merchants selling on its platform.
Ola on the other hand saw a 10 times increase on an Year-on-Year basis in the number of rides users hailed via its apps.
Here’s an overall overview of Softbank’s financial performance for past nine months :
According to previous reports, Zo Rooms was in talks with at least two investors for a new funding round, which was turning out to be a task in itself for the company. Primary cause behind this trouble was its lead investor Tiger Global’s unwillingness to participate again, as the firm has decided to slow down its investments.
There have also been rumours, that Softbank might now lead an over $600 Million in the combined entity. Nothing has been confirmed by either of the companies involved though.
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