Ritesh Agarwal is an Indian entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Oyo Rooms. He started coding at age 8 and founded Oravel Stays in 2012, which he later rebranded as Oyo Rooms in 2013. Oyo Rooms standardized hotel rooms across India by creating quality standards and affordable prices. The company raised funding and expanded across Asia, America, and Europe. Ritesh faced challenges with his initial ventures not succeeding but persevered with the idea of standardizing affordable hotel rooms through Oyo Rooms, which became very successful. He is now one of the youngest CEOs and billionaires in the world.
2. RITESH AGARWALRITESH
AGARWAL
Founder & CEO of OYO Rooms
❖ An Indian Entrepreneur and
Worlds Youngest CEO at 17
❖ Born at Bissam, Cuttack, Odisha
❖ Net Worth $1 Billion
❖ CEO – OYO Rooms (2013)
❖ Board Member- Confederation of Indian Industry
❖ OYOs Current Valuation nearly 360Cr
❖ Belongs to a Marwari Family
❖ Loves Coding and to Travel
❖ First Asian to achieve the ‘Under 20 Peter Theil
Fellowship’
3. RITESH AGARWALRITESH
AGARWAL
Founder & CEO of OYO Rooms
❖ An Indian Entrepreneur and
Worlds Youngest CEO at 17
❖ Born at Bissam, Cuttack, Odisha
❖ Net Worth $1 Billion
❖ CEO – OYO Rooms (2013)
❖ Board Member- Confederation of Indian Industry
❖ OYOs Current Valuation nearly 360Cr
❖ Belongs to a Marwari Family
❖ Loves Coding and to Travel
❖ First Asian to achieve the ‘Under 20 Peter Theil
Fellowship’
❖ OYO: On Your Own
❖ Founded: By Ritesh Agarwal in 2013
❖ Headquarter: Gurgaon, Haryana, India
❖ Area Served: Asia, America and Europe
❖ Funding: Soft Bank Group, Lightspeed
Venture Partners and Sequoia India
❖ Website: www.oyorooms.com
4. HOW DID HIS JOURNEY BEGIN ?
• Born in a Business family at Bissam, Cuttack and
attended Scared Heart School,Rayagada
• He was different from rest of his friends, his fun and
learning was in Computers
• Try hard to find opportunities to make mistakes, to
learn new cool stuffs
• Doing that he gained a keen knowledgein software
• Started coding at age 8, software become his love
• In 2009, Ritesh left Kota for IIT, and took backseat for
Bansal Tutorials, that his dad got him enrolled into
• Rest of the time he used to chilland travelaround
• Started writing a book- ‘Indian Engineering Colleges: A
complete encyclopediaof top 100 engineering colleges
5. HOW DID HIS JOURNEY BEGIN ?
• Born in a Business family at Bissam, Cuttack and
attended Scared Heart School,Rayagada
• He was different from rest of his friends, his fun and
learning was in Computers
• Try hard to find opportunities to make mistakes, to
learn new cool stuffs
• Doing that he gained a keen knowledgein software
• Started coding at age 8, software become his love
• In 2009, Ritesh left Kota for IIT, and took backseat for
Bansal Tutorials, that his dad got him enrolled into
• Rest of the time he used to chilland travelaround
• Started writing a book- ‘Indian Engineering Colleges: A
complete encyclopediaof top 100 engineering colleges
• At age 16, Ritesh was choosen among 240 childrento be
a part of Asian Science Camp held at TIFR, Mumbai
• The camp was an annual forum for pre-collegiate
students who aimed at promoting discussion for the
better of science in the region
• During that time, Ritesh found free time and started to
travela lot and stayed in PGs Budgeted Hotels
• Stay at odd bed and breakfast places and attend events
and conferenceto meet entrepreneurs
• Used to sneak into the events and conference,as he
couldn’t afford to the registrationcost
• And there it all started
CONTINUED…
6. LIFE AS AN ENTREPRENEUR
FORMATION OF ORAVEL STAYS
➢ In 2011, Ritesh moved Delhi to start something of
his own
➢ Money was not a problem for him as he was getting
a good pocket money of amount Rs-15,000/month
➢ Ritesh felt that budget hotels in India didn’t even
meets the basic needs of traveler
➢ Capitalizingon this opportunity, he started his first
venture in 2012- “ORAVEL STAYS”
➢ Meant for the destination for short term and mid term
rentals for bed and breakfast joints, private rooms and
service apartments
➢ Got funding of Rs-30 Lakhs from VentureNursery, an
Investore who nurture Startups
7. ➢ With new found confidence, he started working rigorously, but his business does not seems its picking up
➢ After repeated trial to pick the business up, things were not falling in place
➢ Ritesh evengot Manish Sinha Gurgaon based Cinnamon stays, as their co-founder but unfortunately it didn’t
help and turned out to quit the company
➢ Even tried to replicateAirBnB model, but that didn’t workand the company was not able to pick
substantial transaction
➢ With sufficient money in pocket, started working in new found idea
8. TRANSFORMATION TO OYO ROOMS
❖ After quittingORAVELS STAYS,Ritesh wentinto
thinkingmode and remind the accommodation issues
he used to face
❖ There many a time he was sold a crappy place and
huge amount and a nice place in little amount
❖ This got him motivated again, to create another social
community to bring informationabout all good places
together on one platform
❖ At last he presentedhis new business model and in
2013 he re-launched ORAVELSTAYS as OYO ROOMS
9. OYO: ON YOUR OWN
✓ OYO was nothing but an idea to create India’s largest chainof efficient young standardized
rooms with no add on with an affordable prices
✓ OYO Rooms reached out to the prospectivehotels or hotels owner could also reached out to them
an OYO’s Team would visitthe place, audit the hotels to understand the changes that are required
to standardizedthe property as per OYO standards and shares the same with the hotels
✓ After the launch, Ritesh even got on board Bhawna Agarwal, former CEO at e-commerce firm
SeventyMM for criticalbusiness advising
✓ This time they decide to play in Smart and Safe way, and made sure to leave no stone unturned,
and tied-up with dozen number of hotels and with their help offered rooms to customers
✓ This planned made a success and eventually had to increase their teams of 2 to 15 and then to 25
✓ In 2014, raised Rs-4 Crore from Lightspeed Venture Partners and DSG Consumer Partners at
a pre-money valuation at Rs-14 Crore
10. ACCOMPLISHMENTS
❖ Awarded the TiE-Lumis Entreprenuerial excellence Award (2014)
❖ The First resident Asian to win under 20 Theil Fellowship (2013)
❖ Named one of the top 50 entrepreneursby TATA firstDot Awards(2013)
❖ Finalist of Global student Entrepreneurship Awards India
❖ Named one of the “ 8 Hottest Teenage Startup Founders in the World’ by Business Insider (2013)
❖ Worlds youngest CEO at 17 ( recognized at 16)
11. CONCLUSION
IN THE BEGINNING THE WILL CRITISIZE YOU, THEY WILL JUDGE YOU
BUT THEY DON’T KNOW YOU, WHAT ARE YOU CAPABLE OF
THEY ONLY THING YOU NEED TO DO IS
“BELIEVE IN YOURSELF”
12. “It is extremely
important to build
something that a 100
people absolutely love
using rather than make
something that 1000
people would just, kind
of, like.
’’
