OYO Hotels & Homes has announced a slew of leadership appointments across three of its fast-growing international markets as it endeavors to aggressively expand its presence across China, Europe, and Malaysia.

The company has announced the appointment of Sam Shi as its chief operating officer (COO) for OYO Jiudian, its Chinese subsidiary, which over the past year has emerged as its second home market after India. 

Prior to joining OYO, Shi was the President of Global Consumables and chief executive at Asia Pulp & Paper Co. He also has worked with energy drink giant Red Bull and French multinational hospitality firm Accor Group, besides having a two decade-long run across roles at Pepsi China. Shi will report to Ritesh Agarwal, founder & CEO at OYO, who is looking over the China market directly. 

Ritesh told ET, “China is a home market and we invest in leadership there like we invest in India. With some of the best and brightest minds joining the leadership team in our home market China and high-priority markets in Southeast Asia and Europe, I am confident that they will be able to help us set new benchmarks in the hospitality industry. What we are attempting is to solve the demand supply imbalance that characterizes the global hospitality sector through technology and talent and these appointments will take us a step ahead in this direction.” 

In addition, OYO has also appointed Andrew Verbitsky as head of Europe, Jeremy Sanders as the UK head, and Tan Ming Luk as the country head for Malaysia. Verbitsky has had prior stints at Airbnb and Delivery Hero, among others. All of them will report to OYO’s COO Abhinav Sinha.

The hires are significant given OYO’s major expansion drive in China. As per data released by the company, OYO Jiudian is currently present in 280 cities across the world’s second-largest economy, operating more than 5,000 hotels and 2,60,000 rooms. 

In addition, the company has also been hiring aggressively for business development and HR functions in Spanish cities including Madrid, Valencia, Andalusia and Barcelona as it pursues an aggressive expansion strategy in Spain and Portugal.

The latest set of leadership appointments come within two months of OYO naming seasoned aviation executive Aditya Ghosh as its chief executive for India and South Asia in a bid to attract world-class leadership, in the wake of its focus to drive accelerated growth in its home markets - India and China.