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Ritesh Agarwal
Founder and CEO, OYO Hotels & Homes- Oyo Hotels
Ritesh Agarwal's Journey so far...
- Born in Bissamcuttack, a hotbed for Naxals, in Southeast Odisha, Ritesh Agarwal grew up in the small town of Rayagada. After completing his schooling, he went to a Delhi college but dropped out
- Agarwal started an online short-stay accommodation listing venture, Oravel, at a young age. It was later incubated by Mumbai-based startup accelerator Venture Nursery
- As he was a college dropout, Agarwal qualified for the Thiel Fellowship, which gives $100,000 to entrepreneurs below 20 years who skipped college and started their own business. The fellowship is set up by early Facebook investor and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel
- Based on the model of US-headquartered Airbnb, Ritesh Agarwal founded OYO Hotels and Homes in 2013 and currently is one of the world's leading chain of hotels. By the age of 22, he became a millionaire
- Under his leadership, the Gurugram-headquartered OYO expanded rapidly from India to Malaysia and the USA, and is today present in 80 countries and in over 800 cities. In one of his biggest bets in 2017, Agarwal launched OYO in China
- He raised a series of funds from firms like SoftBank, Hero Enterprise, China Lodging Group, ride-hailing companies Grab and Didi Chuxing. In July 2019, Agarwal undertook a $1.5 billion stock buyback, along with pumping in an additional $500 million into OYO valuing the startup at $10 billion
- From a small-town boy who used to sell SIM cards in Odisha, Ritesh Agarwal became one of the world's youngest self-made billionaires. He featured in the Hurun Rich List 2020 with a net worth of $1.1 billion.
Before you go ...
- Ritesh Agarwal named his startup OYO - 'On Your Own', so that one is in control of his own. He gave this name as he did not get control of the television remote to watch his favourite programs with his cousins
- Agarwal draws inspiration from another college dropout Bill Gates and Ola co-founder Bhavish Agarwal
- Right from an early age, he was keen on writing. He also had a knack for computer programming and started taking coding lessons from the age of 10
- Known to have a sweet tooth, in an interview to ET he said, “I love gorging on chhena poda (roasted sweet cheese)."
- In one of his hotels, he once earned a Rs 50 tip after a family was impressed by his babysitting skills.