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OYO Hotels and Homes is looking to withdraw the papers for an initial public offering (IPO) from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) which could halt the company’s plan to go public, according to a report by The Economic Times.

The company has been planning this for some time now and all the stakeholders have been informed, the report said. The Ritesh Agarwal-led firm is now looking to raise money from private investors over the next few months.

OYO first filed its draft red herring prospectus in October 2021 aiming to raise Rs 8,430 crore. In January 2023, the markets regulator returned OYO’s application asking it to refile the application with updated information, months after investor SoftBank slashed OYO’s internal valuation to $2.7 billion from $3.4 billion.

The firm reportedly filed a confidential pre-filing with SEBI for a significantly smaller public fundraise, as per the report.

YourStory could not independently verify the report and has reached out to OYO for a comment.

OYO, however, denied ET’s report stating that it is inaccurate and has not been confirmed by the company representative or its IPO bankers and counsels.

Former SBI Chairman Rajnish Kumar has also stepped down from the position of group strategic advisor at OYO after the end of his contract in December 2021, according to the report.

In January, Bloomberg reported that OYO was in talks with Malaysia’s sovereign fund Khazanah Nasional Berhad to raise $400 million at a valuation of $6 billion.