Ritesh Agarwal

Founder | OYO Rooms

Who am I

Three years ago, he started off with a single Gurgaon hotel. It had 14 rooms, and OYO took over 11 of those. It is today India’s largest branded network of budget hotels – the startup calls it largest “across all categories” – with 5,500 properties in over 170 cities. It’s like Uber for budget hotel rooms. Dropout. That’s often the first thing people say about Ritesh. Perhaps his parents should have seen it coming when he sold SIM cards at 13. But he’s now a 23-year-old startup millionaire.

At 18, Ritesh was looking to replicate an Airbnb-like business. Along with a co-founder who later departed, he launched Oravel Stays in 2012, which aggregated budget hotels and put them online. By that time, many travel agents were also getting online.

After disrupting the budget category, Ritesh Agarwal’s hospitality start-up OYO is now opening keys to a more premium stay with OYO Townhouse. Targetted at Millennials the trendy looking OYO Townhouse which will have hyper-local addresses is re-engineering the concept of hospitality. Targetted at ‘millennial-minded’ customers, Townhouse will offer Netflix in the rooms, smart multi-purpose spaces, and a bundle of other interesting offerings including creative menus.

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