Ritesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO of OYO Rooms and Praveen Roy, CEO – THSC exchanged a MoU in the presence of Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Union Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship. The MoU seeks to build capacity and certify skilled labour in the hospitality sector, through training and certification of nearly three lakh workers across 150 cities by 2017.
Ritesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO, OYO Rooms said, “The non-branded hospitality sector in India has a high demand for talent, and not enough skilled workers to address it. Our association with THSC will fill this gap by providing skilled manpower to the industry. It will also help enhance employment opportunities in the unorganised sector. Our network now has close to 4000 hotels with more than 40,000 rooms, and we are the largest brand available in the country. We want to standardise the experience not just for customers, but also hoteliers and staff, so that cross-location movement of talent is seamless and efficient.
Agarwal added, “Today, for an entrepreneur wanting to venture into Hospitality, the upfront investment and running costs can be daunting. The shortage of skilled manpower becomes another big deterrent. We want to ensure that at least a 1000 of the people we train develop the business acumen and interest in opening up their own hotels and become partners with us. So, this is actually an opportunity to transform the industry and positively impact the socio-economic status of the workers.”
Praveen Roy, CEO, THSC said, “OYO Rooms’ partnership with us has tremendous potential to organise the vast unorganised sector of unbranded hotels and their employees. The industry needs employable people. This tie-up will help drive upward mobility and value- creation for all stakeholders.”
