Success Story Of OYO Rooms CEO, Ritesh Agarwal
We all love to read success stories and we find the great people inside them. There are certain people, who always make an impact in our lives by their existence. Ritesh Agarwal of OYO rooms is one of them. He is the founder and CEO of OYO rooms and the world’s second-youngest billionaire after Kylie Jenner.
Ritesh started his career with a humble beginning and excelled in the entrepreneurial world. This teenage boy revolutionized the look of the hotel chain and hotel accommodation business. Now Ritesh Agarwal is not just a name but is a keyword among the people in the world.
How did his journey begin?
The journey of Ritesh began earlier than normal.
He was born in the city of Bisam Cuttack, in the Rayagada district of Odisha. His schooling was completed in the Sacred heart school in Odisha. In this school time, he was a normal average student, but his interests and liking in studies were different than other kids. His interests were in computers and screwing it up to get the results that he wanted. He was not afraid to make mistakes and learn from the experience. Which later made him excel in the business world. Because his mistakes taught him how to make the right decisions.
He started coding when he was just eight years old. His love for softwares made him decide to start a career in the coding business when he just finished his schooling.
In 2009, Ritesh left his home for going to Kota for preparing for IIT, and he came to know that Kota is a place to learn to code in a much better way. As his father’s choice, he joined Bansal Academy at Kota and found time to learn to code much faster as he has a lot of time to spare.
He has even written a book about “ Indian engineering college- A complete encyclopedia for top 100 engineering colleges”. This book was going well on Flipkart and his coaching center at Bandal tutorial published his photo with the book on the first page of the tutorials magazine.
When he turned 16, Ritesh was chosen among the 240 children to be a part of the Asian science camp held at tata institute of fundamental research (TIFR) in Mumbai. The camp was an annual forum for pre-college students who aimed at promoting discussion for the betterment of science in the region.
Life as an entrepreneur-
Formation of Oravel-
In 2011, Ritesh moved to Delhi to start a career as an entrepreneur and at the same time prepare for the SAT to study in the US. At that time money was not an issue for him. Because he has his savings from Kota and pocket money of 15.000 rupees per month. He was easily managing to stay in the PG at that time.
It was a blessing that he could not excel in the SAT examination and could not go to the US. And he has the only option to start a company and start his entrepreneur journey. He started his first venture in 2012 as “Oravel Stays”. It was an aggregator of bed and breakfast (B&B) in India.
In a matter of no time, he also secured funding of 30 lakhs from Venture Nursery, an accelerator firm that brought together a bunch of storied investors to nurture start-ups.
Transformation to OYO rooms-
When Ritesh thought more about the hotel chain business and how the people suffer by choosing the wrong hotel or accommodation, foods, and lodging, the business idea came to his mind.
This also reminded him about his own experience of choosing a hotel or lodge to stay in and the food, and the decor. It was all disgusting. He also struggled about getting a well furnished and decorated home with lots of facilities and at a good affordable price. This got him motivated again to create the online yet social community to bring information about all good places together on one platform. For this name of the company Oravel changed.
And in 2013, Ritesh relaunched his company as OYO rooms.
OYO rooms mission was to give the customer the best experience in the hotel business with good staff, good food, good accommodation, and on a budget that is acceptable to everyone. And to make sure the hotel met their expectation OYO rooms reach out to prospective hotels or a hotel owner could reach out to them, and the OYO team could audit the hotel to see the required standard of the hotel and share the same with the hotel.
Now OYO is the top player in the hotel chain industry and in 2023, it will be the biggest hotel chain in the world.
Accomplishments-
- Awarded the TiE-Lumis entrepreneurial experience award- 2014
- The first resident Asian to win 20 under 20 Thiel fellowship 2013
- Name one of the top 50 entrepreneurs by TATA first dot awards by 2013
- Finalist of global student entrepreneurial award in India
- List of 8 hottest teenage start-up founders in the world by business insider 2013
- World’s youngest CEO in 2016
Conclusion-
Whatever the business is present in the world as the giant, the founders were more giant than it. In the existing market OYO rooms founder, Ritesh Agarwal is also a giant. And here I have given some points about the success story of Ritesh Agarwal and his company OYO. If you like something and I missed something, then feel free to comment. We would be glad to hear from you.
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