Ritesh Agarwal’s Journey from a College Dropout to the Youngest Self-Made Billionaire
By: Ashwathy Nair
At the time when in India, finding hotels within budget was a bigger issue than the availability of hotels, a man came up with a vision of creating a solution for people who are looking for affordable hotels and introduced OYO Rooms at his young age. It has achieved to solve the issue of affordability, cleanliness as well as the availability of hotels. OYO rooms have now become one of the most successful start-ups in India as the country’s largest budget hotel chain. It has spread itself over the globe with 23,000 hotels, 8, 50,000 rooms, and 46,000 vacation homes.
The mastermind behind the idea of OYO which means “On Your Own” is Ritesh Agarwal, who has grown as one of the most successful entrepreneurs in his 20s. Ritesh Agarwal was a tech freak and had a passion to travel around the world. During his travels, the issue with budget hotels was discovered. At his young age of 17, Ritesh Agarwal came up with launching Oravel Stays, which was modelled after Airbnb and later had become OYO rooms.
The Journey to the Entrepreneurial realm
Ritesh Agarwal was born to a humble family in Orissa, Bissam Cuttack. Ritesh Agarwal did his schooling from Sacred Heart School, Rayagada Orissa. He had a passion to become an entrepreneur and in order to pursue it, he enrolled himself into the Indian School of Business & Finance, Delhi. However, he left his college mid-way as he wanted to start his own company. His desire to travel the world made him realize the need for affordable hotels with decent services in India.
If he finds affordable hotels, it had an issue of having no necessary facilities being provided like comfortable beds, AC, breakfast facilities, and Wi-Fi. This gave him an idea to do something that would solve these issues.
He gathered his love for travel along with his obsession with technology into making something useful. Although the journey of Ritesh wasn’t easy, it had difficult roads like issues with funding, marketing, reaching out to the investors and property owners, had also faced mixed reactions from friends and relatives around him and whatnot, but this young guy found his path to success.
He started his journey to success by launching “Oravel Stays”, which was helpful for people to locate and book affordable hotels near them.
It helped travellers to find hotels on their budget but it was not serving the exact purpose for which he started this. Soon the realization hit that the major issue was in the non-standard services, so he updated his old business model and converted it into a better version and re-launched it as “OYO Rooms”, which provides pocket-friendly rooms with standard facilities in more than 1000 hotels across India and now it is spread over the world.
OYO rooms is nothing but an idea to create India’s largest chain of efficient, young, standardized rooms that has an intention to build the coolest chain that will live up to the basic standards and high expectations for rates like never before.
The story of Ritesh Agarwal is a true inspiration for every aspiring entrepreneur, who wishes to make their mark in the business fraternity. This guy possesses a unique thinking capability – a major attribute that has helped him grow as the youngest billionaire in India.
