A month after raising $ 250 mn in Series D funding from SoftBank, Hero Enterprise and an additional $ 10 mn from China Lodging group, China’s leading hotel management firm,  OYO announced the company has selected Hyderabad to set their technology development centre with Priyank Choudhary at the helm. Apart from hiring former Amazon executive Choudhary who will look into the micro markets and new product technology, the Gurgaon startup is also looking to expand the team with civil and software engineers. The main focus being developing products and technologies to boost sales, corporate travel plans and travel agent solutions.

To quote Ritesh Agarwal, chief executive of OYO, the “new tech development centre in Hyderabad will support our operations across the country and internationally. The new development centre will support our accelerated growth plans and act as our centre of excellence for machine learning and artificial intelligence initiatives.”

OYO is looking towards having a team of 50 engineers in the new tech centre, apart from the already hired 100 engineers at their Gurgaon centre. With advanced technology being available readily, OYO plans to toughen the competition for other portals like Treebo Hotels, MakeMyTrip, Fabhotels.