ETtech Morning Briefing: Oyo's China bet, Flipkart loyalty, BookMyShow's non movie biz growth & more

1. Oyo in China

What's the news?

Softbank Group Corp is doubling down on its bet on hospitality chain OYO, after its chairman and chief executive Masayoshi Son called it a ‘next-generation hotel company’, and said it planned to support the Gurgaon-based venture through joint venture for its foray into China.

What's the present situation?

OYO’s Chinese operations currently include over 11,000 exclusive -- franchised or manchised -- rooms in 26 cities including Hangzhou, Xian, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Xiamen and Kunming among others.

2. Flipkart may launch loyalty program

What's the news?

As the battle to acquire customers intensifies within the Indian ecommerce space, homegrown player Flipkart is expected to launch a loyalty programme for customers by end of July or early August, three people familiar with the company’s plans told ET.

What's the plan?

The Bengaluru-headquartered company has set aside $173 million, or about 1,178 crore, to spend on services under the programme for the next three years, said one of the sources. Internally being called ‘LockIn,’ the programme is expected to offer Flipkart’s ‘loyal customers’ faster and free deliveries, early access to deals and other privileges across its group companies including PhonePe and Myntra once a customer hits a certain threshold of purchases, they said.

3. Uber India Systems sees marginal growth

What's the news?

Uber India Systems, which provides marketing and support services for Uber’s businesses, has posted a marginal increase of 10% in its total revenues from 374 crore in FY16 to 410 crore in FY17, according to the company’s financials with the MCA, sourced from data-tracking platform Tofler.

What do the numbers say?

This is in contrast to its revenue growth from FY15 to FY16. The company had posted a 442% jump in its revenues for the year ended March 2016, up from 69 crore in the year prior to that. The company has also clocked a profit 30 crore in FY17, up from 28.8 crore in the previous year, despite increasing its total expenses over the same period. Uber India Systems posted 380.6 crore under total expenses, of which 95.5 crore went under the tab of employee benefit expenses.

4. BookMyShow to grow its non-movie biz

What's the news?

BookMyShow is looking to scale up its non-movie business over the next two years. “About 30% of our revenues currently come from the non-movie ticketing segment. We intend to grow this to 50% by 2020,” said Albert Almeida, COO – Non movies at BookMyShow.

Apart from the higher margins, a key factor in the focus towards non-movies segment follows a plateauing of growth in the movie ticketing segment.

How does BookMyShow plan to do it?

BookMyShow is foraying into ticketing for international events in sports, live entertainment and experiences across countries. These events typically have a clear 40%-50% higher mark-up from tickets for national events.

BookMyShow is looking to list between 500-1000 international events on the platform this year.