The teenage boy – Ritesh Agarwal is the young Founder & CEO of OYO Rooms – fastest growing Branded network of hotels offline & online.
With a current valuation of nearly 360Cr, OYO rooms does nothing out of the box but provides travellers the coolest yet cheapest efficient, young, standardized rooms with no add-ons attached to it! Personally, Ritesh with his common-man qualities of wheatish, tall, thin, scruffy look, isn’t easy to find in a crowd. But mind you, this is also the look of the founder who puts in 16 hours a day to make his dream come true, and has been through a wild journey from as far back as he can remember, to get this ahead.
How did his journey begin?
The journey of our hero began rather early than normal!
Ritesh was born to a business class family in Bissam Cuttack in Orissa and attended the Sacred Heart School in Rayagada, Orissa.
During the growing up days in Rayagada, Odisha, it was all about fun and learning for him but his ways were rather unconventional from those of other kids. Interestingly, he had started coding when he was just eight years old. So software had obviously become his love. And by the time he reached his 10th grade, he had made up his mind that he wanted to take up coding for a living.
In 2009, Ritesh left for Kota to join IIT and in no time he figured that Kota was anything but a place where one could learn coding. Hence, his dream of coding took a backseat and as he had a lot of time to spare, he started attending Bansal Tutorials that his dad had got him enrolled into. The rest of the time he used to just chill and travel around a lot.
He even started writing a book and ended up inscribing – ‘Indian Engineering Colleges: A Complete Encyclopaedia of Top 100 Engineering Colleges’. This book turned out to become huge on Flipkart and was sold out in a while too. In fact, the tutorials he went to also had this book and his picture was right on the cover. When he turned 16; Ritesh was chosen among the 240 children to be a part of the Asian Science Camp held at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai. The camp was an annual forum for pre-collegiate students who aimed at promoting discussion for the betterment of science in the region. During that time; Ritesh due to the leverage of the free time also used to travel a lot, and stayed in PG’s, budget hotels, etc. And because there was nothing left to interest him about Kota, he often used to take a train to Delhi. He used to stay at odd bed & breakfast (B&B) places and attend events and conferences to meet entrepreneurs and because he couldn’t afford the registration costs, he would often just sneak in.
And that is where it all started!
Life as an Entrepreneur…!
I. Formation of Oravel
In 2011, Ritesh moved to Delhi with intentions of starting up something of his own and at the same time to prepare for SAT to move to the US for further studies.
Now, money back then was not a problem for him because he had savings from Kota and the pocket money was good; roughly Rs.15,000 for a month.
But fortunately or unfortunately, SAT never happened. Hence, he used to do nothing but meet and read about entrepreneurs, start-ups, businesses, and especially Airbnb!
With sufficient money in his pockets, he started working on his new found interest and at the same time, he also presented his idea at the Thiel Fellowship – a global contest intended for students under the age of 20. He managed to reach amongst the top ten winners who received a sum of $100,000 [over two years (about Rs 2.7 lakhs / month)] as well as guidance and other resources, to drop out of school and create a start-up, from PayPal co-founder and Facebook investor – Peter Thiel.
II. Transformation to OYO Rooms
That is when Ritesh went into the thinking mode and realized that, the biggest pain on the face of this earth while travelling was to find a good, affordable & most importantly “available” hotel to stay in but like always, most of us ended up staying in a crappy place with equally crappy staff, food, etc. which killed the whole trip.
This also reminded of the time he used to face accommodation issues during his trips. There were times when he was sold a crappy place for a huge amount and many-a-times he used find a nice place in a little amount. This got him motivated again, to create an online yet social community to bring information about all good places together on one platform.
And as a last resort Ritesh tweaked his present business model and in 2013 re-launched Oravel as “OYO Rooms”.
In 2014; the company raised Rs. 4 Cr from Lightspeed Venture Partners (LSVP) and DSG Consumer Partners, at a pre-money valuation (valuation of a company prior to investment or financing) of Rs 14 Cr.
What motivated Ritesh even more was that, by now the company was clocking gross bookings of more than Rs.1 Cr. per month.
Accomplishments…!
Awarded the TiE-Lumis Entrepreneurial.
1) Excellence Award (2014)
2) The first resident Asian to win ’20 Under 20’ Thiel Fellowship (2013)
3) Named one of the Top 50 Entrepreneurs by TATA First Dot Awards (2013)
4) Finalist of Global Student Entrepreneurship Awards-India
5) Named one of the ‘8 Hottest Teenage Start Up Founders in the World’ by Business Insider (2013)
6) World’s Youngest CEO at 17(recognized at 16)
With a current valuation of nearly 360Cr, OYO rooms does nothing out of the box but provides travellers the coolest yet cheapest efficient, young, standardized rooms with no add-ons attached to it! Personally, Ritesh with his common-man qualities of wheatish, tall, thin, scruffy look, isn’t easy to find in a crowd. But mind you, this is also the look of the founder who puts in 16 hours a day to make his dream come true, and has been through a wild journey from as far back as he can remember, to get this ahead.
How did his journey begin?
The journey of our hero began rather early than normal!
Ritesh was born to a business class family in Bissam Cuttack in Orissa and attended the Sacred Heart School in Rayagada, Orissa.
During the growing up days in Rayagada, Odisha, it was all about fun and learning for him but his ways were rather unconventional from those of other kids. Interestingly, he had started coding when he was just eight years old. So software had obviously become his love. And by the time he reached his 10th grade, he had made up his mind that he wanted to take up coding for a living.
In 2009, Ritesh left for Kota to join IIT and in no time he figured that Kota was anything but a place where one could learn coding. Hence, his dream of coding took a backseat and as he had a lot of time to spare, he started attending Bansal Tutorials that his dad had got him enrolled into. The rest of the time he used to just chill and travel around a lot.
He even started writing a book and ended up inscribing – ‘Indian Engineering Colleges: A Complete Encyclopaedia of Top 100 Engineering Colleges’. This book turned out to become huge on Flipkart and was sold out in a while too. In fact, the tutorials he went to also had this book and his picture was right on the cover. When he turned 16; Ritesh was chosen among the 240 children to be a part of the Asian Science Camp held at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai. The camp was an annual forum for pre-collegiate students who aimed at promoting discussion for the betterment of science in the region. During that time; Ritesh due to the leverage of the free time also used to travel a lot, and stayed in PG’s, budget hotels, etc. And because there was nothing left to interest him about Kota, he often used to take a train to Delhi. He used to stay at odd bed & breakfast (B&B) places and attend events and conferences to meet entrepreneurs and because he couldn’t afford the registration costs, he would often just sneak in.
And that is where it all started!
Life as an Entrepreneur…!
I. Formation of Oravel
In 2011, Ritesh moved to Delhi with intentions of starting up something of his own and at the same time to prepare for SAT to move to the US for further studies.
Now, money back then was not a problem for him because he had savings from Kota and the pocket money was good; roughly Rs.15,000 for a month.
But fortunately or unfortunately, SAT never happened. Hence, he used to do nothing but meet and read about entrepreneurs, start-ups, businesses, and especially Airbnb!
With sufficient money in his pockets, he started working on his new found interest and at the same time, he also presented his idea at the Thiel Fellowship – a global contest intended for students under the age of 20. He managed to reach amongst the top ten winners who received a sum of $100,000 [over two years (about Rs 2.7 lakhs / month)] as well as guidance and other resources, to drop out of school and create a start-up, from PayPal co-founder and Facebook investor – Peter Thiel.
II. Transformation to OYO Rooms
That is when Ritesh went into the thinking mode and realized that, the biggest pain on the face of this earth while travelling was to find a good, affordable & most importantly “available” hotel to stay in but like always, most of us ended up staying in a crappy place with equally crappy staff, food, etc. which killed the whole trip.
This also reminded of the time he used to face accommodation issues during his trips. There were times when he was sold a crappy place for a huge amount and many-a-times he used find a nice place in a little amount. This got him motivated again, to create an online yet social community to bring information about all good places together on one platform.
And as a last resort Ritesh tweaked his present business model and in 2013 re-launched Oravel as “OYO Rooms”.
In 2014; the company raised Rs. 4 Cr from Lightspeed Venture Partners (LSVP) and DSG Consumer Partners, at a pre-money valuation (valuation of a company prior to investment or financing) of Rs 14 Cr.
What motivated Ritesh even more was that, by now the company was clocking gross bookings of more than Rs.1 Cr. per month.
Accomplishments…!
Awarded the TiE-Lumis Entrepreneurial.
1) Excellence Award (2014)
2) The first resident Asian to win ’20 Under 20’ Thiel Fellowship (2013)
3) Named one of the Top 50 Entrepreneurs by TATA First Dot Awards (2013)
4) Finalist of Global Student Entrepreneurship Awards-India
5) Named one of the ‘8 Hottest Teenage Start Up Founders in the World’ by Business Insider (2013)
6) World’s Youngest CEO at 17(recognized at 16)
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