Update 2 April: OYO founder and CEO Ritesh Agarwal has announced on Twitter that he will forgo 100 per cent of his salary for the rest of the year, while the company's executive team has volunteered to take pay cuts of between 25 and 50 per cent.
Start-up hotel company OYO has reportedly furloughed the
majority of its UK staff due to a slump in bookings caused by the coronavirus
outbreak.
According to Yahoo! News, the company told staff in an email
that the “majority of roles” would be placed on furlough for up to eight weeks
under the UK government’s coronavirus job retention scheme, which includes a
grant of up to 80 per cent of employees’ wages up to £2,500 per month.
The email said the move was necessitated by “a sharp, recent
downturn in our business as a result of the coronavirus outbreak across the
globe”.
An OYO spokesperson confirmed to Yahoo Finance UK that the
company was placing staff on temporary leave “due to a temporary reduction in
work available”.
While the company has declined to confirm numbers, Yahoo said an
insider believed the move would affect around 200 of OYO’s 300 UK staff.
The firm said some workers would be needed to continue the its
operations and “to service our existing available portfolio and be in the best
position to be able to retain staff in the future, when business returns to
normal”.
OYO is keeping some of its UK hotels open to provide
accommodation for NHS staff and key workers at reduced rates.
The company, which was founded in 2013 by then 19-year-old
Ritesh Agarwal, set up operations in the UK in 2018 and grew rapidly. However,
at the beginning of 2020, dozens of staff were laid off at the UK office and Jeremy
Sanders, who was heading up the country’s team, left the business. The company
was valued at US$10 billion in October 2019 and counts SoftBank and Airbnb as major
investors.