Accor and Treebo Hospitality Ventures have mutually terminated a partnership under which Treebo would have taken the lead to expand Accor's ibis and Mercure brands across India.
Treebo co-founder and CEO Sidharth Gupta said the companies were unable to complete definitive agreements and had mutually decided to pursue their strategies independently. Neither side has disclosed the issues that prevented the transaction from closing.
The arrangement formed part of Accor and InterGlobe’s wider plan to build a portfolio of 300 Accor-branded hotels in India by 2030.
The Announced Deal
Accor and InterGlobe announced their expanded India partnership in April 2025, with Treebo as the exclusive partner for hospitality development. At the time, Accor operated 71 hotels in the country, and the partners planned to combine their hotel assets, development activities and management businesses within a single platform.
The partnership also included a proposed equity transaction. Accor and InterGlobe planned to invest jointly in Treebo and become its largest shareholder, extending a financial and technology relationship established several years earlier. In 2021, Accor led Treebo’s $16 million Series D funding round, following a $6 million funding injection in 2020. The investment supported the development and rollout of Hotel Superhero, Treebo’s cloud-based hotel operations platform, at selected Accor properties.
Within the partnership, Treebo would have become the development platform for Accor’s economy and mid-market brands. Through an exclusive master licence, it would identify owners, sign properties and develop new hotels under ibis, ibis Styles, ibis budget and Mercure. The arrangement involved adding new Accor-branded properties to Treebo’s operating network rather than converting its existing economy hotels.
The proposed master licence came with an initial pipeline. By the time the exclusive partnership was announced, Treebo had reached preliminary agreements with owners for 10 Mercure hotels covering more than 700 rooms across Bengaluru, Siliguri, Kozhikode, Mysuru, Alwar and Haridwar. Accor said the the Accor-Treebo hotel network combined would together represent more than 30,000 rooms once the investment and licensing arrangement was in place.
Treebo brought a much wider operating footprint to the proposed structure. The company managed around 800 hotels across 120 cities, largely through relationships with independent property owners. Its network, technology and operating systems were therefore expected to support Accor’s expansion into smaller cities and properties outside its existing portfolio.
Left: InterGlobe Group MD with Accor CEO .
Right: Treebo CEO Sidharth Gupta
Post covid, Treebo has pivoted from being a pure play hotel brand, to a hotel operating model, as investors pushed for profitability and India’s budget hotel sector gradually gave up steam. It announced it’s first major partnership in 2022 with Radisson, under which it was expected to support the development of 150 Park Inn & Suites by Radisson hotels over 10 years.
Because the proposed Accor master licence was intended to be exclusive, Treebo’s earlier Radisson commitments were carved out of the arrangement. Projects already agreed with Radisson and individual owners could continue, but Treebo was restricted from signing further agrements with Radisson or any other potential competitors of Accor.
Progress After Announcement
Although the definitive agreements remained incomplete, Treebo and Accor began presenting the partnership as operational.
During late 2025, Treebo announced Mercure signings in Siliguri, Kasauli and Haridwar under the master-franchise arrangement. The projects included a 50-room hotel in Siliguri, a 55-room property in Kasauli and a 72-room hotel in Haridwar.
Treebo also built a management structure around the planned portfolio. In February 2026, it appointed Gaurav Misra as executive vice-president and head of its mid-market business. His remit included Treebo’s Medalio brand, Accor’s Mercure and ibis family, and Park Inn & Suites by Radisson.
Meanwhile, Accor continued to include the partnership in its corporate reporting. Its full-year 2025 results, published in February 2026, repeated that Accor and InterGlobe would become Treebo’s largest shareholders and that Treebo would lead ibis and Mercure development through a master licence.
By July 2026, however, the parties had not completed the definitive documents. Gupta told Skift that they had been unable to close the agreements and had decided to disengage.
The cancellation leaves several parts of the announced partnership unresolved. Neither company has confirmed what will happen to the 10 Mercure projects and the additional properties announced after April 2025.
This cancellation leaves many questions unanswered. Strategically, it puts the combined Interglobe-Accor venture at a backfoot, as Treebo showed real scale and promise in helping scale Accor’s brands beyond India’s large metro or leisure hotspots. However, financially, Treebo has much more to answer for – as the Accor funding was a big shot in the arm for a company that is still posting successive losses even as it’s early rivals, OYO Prism, FabHotels and it’s newer competitor Bloom, have shifted to profitability. Questions also remain on the future of Treebo’s Superhero platform and Treebo itself, as one of it’s main investors has now pulled out of an expanded partnership and potential future acquisition.