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Euphoria among #Goa #hockey lovers as first astro turf in #Mapusa takes ...

Euphoria among #Goa #hockey lovers as first astro turf in #Mapusa takes ...

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#Margao #SGPDA Market ideal place to buy your #flowers in #SouthGoa

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"XXX is a massive, untapped opportunity”

"XXX is a massive, untapped opportunity” is something you hear a lot in India, especially from startups and investors. And why not? A still developing country with an economy that is the world’s sixth largest and a large population that accounts for nearly one out of every 5 humans but with an average age of just 29, it is indeed a massive, untapped opportunity.

 

But tapping those opportunities is the hard part. Ask telemedicine startups.

 

On paper, telemedicine makes its own case. A large and diverse country with people spread across thousands of cities, towns and villages, but with quality healthcare facilities and doctors largely restricted to just cities. Why not bridge the gap using technology and the Internet? If Teladoc and Good Doctor could do it in the US and Asia, why would it not work in India? The opportunity was massive and untapped.

 

The startup most gung-ho about telemedicine was Lybrate, founded in 2014 and within 2 years already the most funded telemedicine startup in India. Unlike many others who followed it, Lybrate chose to focus sharply on creating a marketplace of doctors and connecting them to patients who would, hopefully, pay to remotely consult them. That never materialised, at least at the scale Lybrate hoped. Because, as it turns out, Indians don’t like paying for remote consultations with even doctors!

 

Which is why those who followed Lybrate into telemedicine—Aetna (now part of CVS Health), PolicyBazaar, 1mg, Doctor Insta and mFine—have all followed different models. For some, telemedicine is part of a subscription bouquet, while for others, it is a free service whose purpose is to generate leads for other businesses. Freemium seems to be the new normal.

Just what is OYO doing?

I know, I know, you are probably fed up to your back teeth with stories on OYO. Frankly, so am I, especially as Indian media reports focus on two words—expansion and valuation—with eye-popping numbers, the company line but no explanation of the rationale. Or, if there even is one.

Our story today is a little different. Let me explain.

OYO's expansion spree started early last year with the acquisition of service apartment operator Novascotia, leading up to last month's deal to buy European short-term property rental company @Leisure.

Makes sense, you say? Fine. Then what about the acquisition of a wedding marketplace? Or starting cloud kitchens? Or, if media reports are to be believed, plans to enter senior assisted living?

And that's just over the past year, without taking into account the spread of its tentacles globally. OYO entered five new countries last year, and it has already matched that count so far in 2019.

OYO is now in 18 countries, its website claims, never once naming all of them. We trawled OYO's blog and media reports and found 14. Four countries remained as much of a mystery as OYO's valuation.

That now stands at roughly $10 billion after founder Ritesh Agarwal bought back shares to the tune of $2 billion. And reports say the SoftBank-backed company is targeting an $18 billion valuation in a planned IPO a couple of years from now.

 

“The glitter and glamour of increasing valuation has certainly crossed the real value of the product itself,” one investment banker says.

 

That begs the question—is OYO entering new countries and businesses to increase its valuation or is its valuation increasing as it enters new spheres? Is the six-year-old startup becoming a conglomerate? What on earth is its core competency?

Durga, Prajakta and Pramshu, in today's story, give us the answer—not just with words, but with data. It shows OYO's geographic spread, its (seemingly) allied businesses, ballooning valuation and deepening losses.

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