There was a man who once wanted to take a seat for engineering exams a bit like the other engineering aspirant. He loved coding and was a travel freak. During his days of struggle, he wont to travel on a decent budget, and while traveling, he discovered that there’s a scarcity of hotels with good facilities at a reasonable price. This experience of his brainchild of the concept of OYO rooms that was envisioned to abolish the inadequacy of budget rooms in hotels.
Ritesh Agarwal was born in Bissamcuttak, a village within the district Rayagada, Odisha. His childhood days were all about fun and learning. He had an upbringing that was different from that of the opposite kids around. His family was well-off and had different ideologies about money. While others wont to think that, “A rupee saved maybe a rupee earned”; his family believed in, “Earning two rupees may be a rupee earned.” like the notions elucidated in Robert T. Kiyosaki’s “Rich Dad Poor Dad”, he was ingrained with an appetite to require risks, leave and obtain the things done. it had been more about cultivating a go-getter attitude right from his childhood.
During his childhood, he was very keen on computers and never dithered to explore what’s inside a floppy disc or CD. There was a computer at his father’s office, something that hugely helped his love for computer grows; which afterward proved to be the pivotal aspect of his success. He developed a keen interest in software from a really early age. Though he was always well before the varsity curriculum, learning BASIC and PASCAL, he quickly started grasping higher knowledge from his elder brother’s books. By the time he was in 10th grade, he had made up his mind that he wanted to code for a living. What better place to foster these coding skills than the premier Indian Institute of Technology which is where he set his target.
In 2009, Ritesh visited Kota for the coaching program. He was admitted to the famous Bansal Tutorials for IIT-JEE. It didn’t take much time for him to understand that Kota wasn’t an area to find out to code. For a short time, his dream to become a coder took a backseat and he grew unsure of his ambition. it had been in such times that he started taking short trips to Delhi, where he wont to stay in bed and breakfast (B&B) places and attend events and conferences to satisfy other entrepreneurs. As he couldn’t afford the registration costs, he wont to sneak in unnoticed, exhibiting his street smartness and penchant for adventure and risk-taking. These exposures expanded his vision and his urge for doing something better and larger kept on increasing.
Realizing that even stepping into IIT wasn’t getting to do him much good, he quit Kota and moved to Delhi in 2011. Living during a small dingy rented room, he aspired to figure on a start-up program of his own and steel oneself against SAT to travel to the US for further studies. Unfortunately or fortunately, SAT never happened and after 1 year of meeting people and reading about start-ups, he came up with the thought of Oravel – an Indian counterpart of Airbnb in May 2011. Success wasn’t instant for him and for an extended time, it had been just him, Anuj Tejpal – the guy he hired for operations; and a few interns. Eventually, the project started getting funds and Oravel became what’s now one among the foremost used applications for hotels – OYO Rooms.
A timeline of Ritesh Agarwal’s achievements –
At the age of 16, Ritesh was one of the 240 children selected to be a part of the Asian Science Camp at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai.
At 17, he authored his first book on Engineering Colleges of India – an entire encyclopedia of Top 100 Engineering Colleges, which became a trade book.
At 17, he became the youngest CEO in India at a corporation called Worth Growth Partners.
At 18, he found Oravel, and therefore the same year he secured funding of Rs. 30 Lakh from VentureNursery, an accelerator that brings together investors to nurture start-ups.
When he was 19, he was chosen for Thiel Fellowship – a worldwide contest during which he happened to be the sole winner from India.
At 19, he rebranded Oravel as OYO Rooms abbreviated from ‘On Your Own’ which now has become the foremost sought-after platform for bookings.
At 21, he became the youngest Millionaire from India’s booming startup community.
At 23, He was featured in Forbes 30 under 30 in Consumer Tech.
Ever since OYO Rooms was founded, Ritesh Agarwal focused and showed an unassailable commitment towards delivering the high-quality guest experience, which makes it the primary preference for the guests. He believes that for a startup to succeed, fixing the proper team is extremely important. And quite anything it’s important to make something useful that folks would accept and use. “It is extremely important to create something that 100 people absolutely love using instead of making something that 1000 people would just, kind of, like”, he says.
Today OYO rooms have grown to work across 70,000 Rooms in 8,500 hotels in 230 towns of India, Nepal, and Malaysia with monthly revenue of around $30 million housing quite 1500 employees. It also features among the businesses which are tipped to become subsequent start-up unicorns consistent with CB Insights research’s findings, published within the NY Times. it’s raised a complete of $125million of funding in 4 rounds from 7 investors. OYO is primarily backed by leading global investors, including the SoftBank Group, Lightspeed India, Sequoia Capital, and Greenoaks Capital.
Ritesh Agarwal has always backed his decisions with guts and hard-work – the 2 essential elements of a successful start-up. Aside from his sheer eminence in the software area and skill to ideate and innovate, he had street-smartness to require up each opportunity to satisfy key people and had an impeccable sagacity to convince investors. He didn’t have a proper education but he never let this fact become an impediment to his dreams. Being one among the youngest entrepreneurs from India, Ritesh may be a true inspiration to the aspiring start-up founders.
