He’s since gone on to have an extremely successful career as CEO of Oyo(on your own) rooms. Ritesh Agarwal was named self-made billionaire man with a net worth of approximately to be INR 7253 crore according to Hurun Rich List 2020.
He is not born with a silver spoon, he had to live a life full of difficulties, hardships, struggles, failures. But somehow his persistence, hard work, talent, confidence and his never give up attitude turned his destiny. He achieved success at a very early age of 18 from here, he directly jumped into another track.
He is the one who dared to challenge problems and took the stand to achieve his goals and He believed that having the ability to dream big is one of the most important attributes in building a large impactful company.
Usually, When we come to know about ordinary people bringing about change, we cannot afford to miss out on this man. He is the one who single-handedly converted.
Personal life
He had a dream when he was a young kid that he would be able to do something new and unique as part of it Initially he wanted to be an airline pilot but one of these days his elder sister who went to an engineering college came back and said that she had gone to the entrepreneurship fest he didn’t know what this word entrepreneur means
It sounded different for him, He tried to find out what entrepreneur meant after getting to know the real meaning of entrepreneur he felt fascinated and changed his dream from airline pilot to an entrepreneur
Family background
He grew up in a small village in Bassam Cuttack, Odisha, India and was brought up in Titilagarh.
Ritesh’s father runs a small shop in Southern Odisha. At the age of 13, he started selling SIM cards to survive. His father wanted Ritesh to take up the shop but Ritesh does not want to.
College days
So post in his 10th grade he went to the northern part of India to join Kota everyone thought that he joined Kota( Rajasthan)to prepare for his IIT entrance exams, but the reason was Ritesh loved to travel it would take 1 day to reach Kota from Titilagarh so he thought he can live life without the reference of his family.
Ritesh says he couldn’t wait every weekend to go out to Delhi to meet the entrepreneurs and that weekend changed to days He missed college and went to attend workshops entrepreneurs which made him more fascinated to become entrepreneurs.
Journey of becoming an entrepreneur
He loved to travel around, While he was travelling across India, he realized that there is a need for affordable hotels which provides decent services in India. He observed that affordable pocket-friendly hotels do not provide necessary services such as AC, Wi-Fi, comfortable beds and breakfast facilities.
Thus he travelled for months staying at budget hotels, attended customer calls every day immersed himself in every possible experience to learn about budget hotel customers and their expectations.
Ritesh started his entrepreneurial journey He dropped out of college and launched his first start‐up Oravel Stays Pvt. Ltd. in the year 2011. Oravel was designed as a platform that creates listing and helps travellers to find pocket-friendly hotels Ritesh Agarwal‘s net worth from Oravel was 60000 rupees from one hotel in Gurgaon.
Being an avid traveller, after some time Ritesh realized that the budget hospitality sector lacked predictability. Therefore, he continued chasing innovative ideas and solutions until, one day, he came up with one that would change his life forever. That solution was OYO.
“He pivoted Oravel to OYO Rooms in 2013’’with the key proposition of offering affordable and standardized, comfortable accommodation.
But he needed financial support it is time he heard about The Thiel Fellowship ( 20 under 20) it is a fellowship program created by billionaire Peter Thiel through the Thiel Foundation. The fellowship is planned for students aged 22 or younger to offer them a total of $100,000 over two years, as well as give them guidance and other resources, but the only condition is that the students need to be drop out of school and pursue other work, which could involve scientific research, creating a start-up, Selection for the fellowship is through a competitive annual process, so Ritesh Agarwal was amazed by the program and applied for the competition in 2013.
Rites Agarwal was the first Asian to be selected in the Thiele fellowship and got funding of $100,000 .he started his entrepreneurial journey at the age of 18.
Timeline of OYO Rooms
He launched OYO Rooms in May 2013 It was launched in Gurgaon.
In August of 2014, Oyo received the first series A funding.
2015 this year has been incredible
In March of 2015, Oyo received an amount of $25million from investors in high-speed India, seqoiua.
In April of 2015, the Oyo app was launched, which made customers book the rooms directly till this time Oyo rooms gained popularity and had expanded to other cities of India like Kolkata, Mumbai, Goa, Bangalore, and more.
In July of 2015, Oyo bagged $100million in a series c rounds of funding from a Japanese investor from Softbank which is one of the most powerful investors in the world.
2016 this year started well
In January of 2016, Oyo bagged 1millon checks ins marks and started to expand the Oyo services outside India first established in Malaysia.
In 2017, Oyo continued expanding and was established in Nepal.
In 2018, Oyo stepped into international business markets Oyo was established in Uk UAE, China, Dubai Indonesia Singapore and raised $200millon from existing investors and $800 million funding from its investor Softbank.
From 2019 to till today Oyo is south Asian largest and the world’s fastest growing hotels chains with $612.1million which just started with 1 hotel in 2013 in Gurgaon, today, Oyo is in more than 800 cities, with more than 23,000 hotels, 850,000 rooms, and 46,000 vacation homes, worldwide.
Achievements
Ritesh Agarwal is listed in the Forbes 30 under 30 list for Asia.
Thiel Fellowship, he was the first Asian to be selected
Business World Young Entrepreneur Award.
As for records of 2020 February, he is the second-youngest self-made billionaire in the world after Kylie Jenner who is the owner of a cosmetic company.
