RITESH AGRAWAL-the young indian entrepreneur

INTRODUCTION

Ritesh Agarwal is an Indian entrepreneur, the founder and CEO of OYO Rooms - the fastest growing Branded network of hotels offline & online.

He is considered as one of the youngest CEOs of India because he started his entrepreneurial journey at the age of 17.

HOW DID He started?

Born and raised in Bissam, Cuttack in Orissa and belong to a business class family.

Interestingly, he had started coding when he was just eight years old and by the time he reached his 10th grade, he had a keen interest in software and made up his mind that he wanted to take up coding for a living.

In 2009, during his coaching for IIT, started writing a book– ‘Indian Engineering Colleges: A Complete Encyclopedia of Top 100 Engineering Colleges’. This book turned out to become huge on Flipkart and was sold out in a while too.

When he turned 16 , Ritesh was chosen among the 240 children to be a part of the Asian Science Camp held at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai.

PROFESSIONAL LIFE

In 2011, he moved to Delhi with intentions of starting up something of his own and at the same time to prepare for SAT to move to the US for further studies.

He had joined the University of London’s Indian campus, but just after three days of joining he felt that he couldn’t continue.

Soon, he started travelling extensively across India at the age of 17 and then he thought that there is an extensive need for budget accommodations in India.

Oravel to

ORAVEL TO OYO ROOMS

Oravel Stays Pvt. Ltd was his first startup in the year 2012.

Oravel was designed as a platform to enable listing and booking of budget and premium accommodations.

In simpler terms, it was meant to be destination for short and midterm rentals for bed and breakfast joints, private rooms and serviced apartments.

Soon, Agrawal realised that just a combination of bed and dinner would not fulfill the expectations of budget travelers in India so he transformed Oravel stays to OYO ROOMS, 2013 with the key proposition of offering affordable and standardized accommodation.

Contd…

OYO Rooms is India's largest branded network of budget hotel chain .It currently operates in more than 160 Indian cities including major metros, regional hubs, leisure destinations and pilgrimage towns ,with a current valuation of nearly 360Cr.

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OYO Rooms mobile app has been a huge success that is downloaded more than 1 million times and more than 1 L. bookings have been made so far.

The app ranks amongst the best-rated apps on Google Play Store and has also been listed as one of the top three apps in the ‘Travel & Local’ category.

AWARDS AND RECOGNITION First resident Asian to win Thiel Fellowship, 2013.

Top 50 Entrepreneurs in 2013 by TATA First Dot powered by NEN Awards.

Named as one of the '8 Hottest Teenage Start Up Founders in the World' in 2013 by Business Insider.

TiE-Lumis Entrepreneurial Excellence Award in 2014 & Business World Young Entrepreneur Award in 2015.

Presented by-

Flotters Group

MBA-II (PSITCoE)