OYO Hotels & Homes has acquired Danamica, a Copenhagen-based data science company which specialises in dynamic pricing, the Indian company said in a statement.
OYO, operated by Oravel Stays Pvt. Ltd, said the acquisition would help it drive its top-line growth by leveraging Danamica’s dynamic pricing capabilities across all its brands. The move is also in line with its global vacation rentals strategy, and the company is committed to spend €300 million (around $328.15 million or Rs 2,373.83 crore) in the vacation homes business in Europe, the firm said.
The financial details of the deal could not be ascertained, but TechCrunch reported that OYO had paid $10 million (approximately Rs 72.25 crore at current exchange rates) for the Danamica ApS-operated firm.
OYO chief strategy officer Maninder Gulati said the move would help the company achieve higher efficiency and provide value for all stakeholders, including real estate owners and customers of its platforms.
Separately, Danamica co-founders Mads Westberg and Rune Larsen said they were confident about the move because of both firms’ data-driven approach and understanding of the importance and impact of artificial intelligence and data science.
OYO says the algorithm it has introduced for dynamic pricing analyses over 140,000 data points every hour, and makes about 60 million price changes globally every day.
Danamica says its core strength lies in pricing for inventory, which has a time-based expiry limit. It applies both economic and machine learning models to achieve dynamic results for its clients.
“Both Rune and Mads are extremely talented individuals and, together with their team, they have built a valuable IP (intellectual property) that analyses many years of data and pricing trends and provides logical and scientific recommendations,” Gulati said.
The acquisition comes around after the company acquired a majority stake in European vacation rental company @Leisure Group from German media house Axel Springer SE in May.
Founded in 2013 by Ritesh Agarwal, Oyo operates more than 18,000 franchised and leased hotels in more than 500 cities across 10 countries including India, China, Malaysia, the UK, the UAE and Indonesia.
The company is backed by investors including SoftBank Group, Lightspeed India, Sequoia Capital, Greenoaks Capital and China Lodging Group, among others.
In July, Agarwal said he would deploy $2 billion (around Rs 13,763 crore) to boost his stake in the hospitality platform via buyback of shares and purchase of fresh equity. As part of the programme, early investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital India said they would sell part of their shareholdings in OYO.
