OYO Rooms Success Story

Ritesh Agarwal is that the young CEO OYO Rooms  quickest growing Brand-named network of hotels offline .

OYO rooms will nothing out of the box however provides travellers the good though most cost-effective economical, young, standardized rooms with no add-ons connected to it!

Personally, Ritesh Agarwal together with his common-man qualities of whitish, tall, thin, seedy look isn’t simple to seek out in an exceedingly crowd. however mind you, this can be conjointly the design of the founder World Health Organization puts in sixteen hours every day to create his dream return true, and has been through a wild journey from as way back as he will bear in mind, to urge this ahead.

How did his journey begin?

The journey of our hero began rather early than normal!

He was born to a business category family in Bissam Cuttack, state and attended the Sacred Heart faculty in Rayagada, Orissa.

During the growing up days in Rayagada, Odisha, it had been all concerning fun and learning for him however his ways in which were rather unconventional from those of alternative children.

His exciting components containing roll in the hay around with the pc, and making an attempt arduous to seek out opportunities to create mistakes, in order that he might learn new stuff. And doing that he gained a keen interest in software!

This started with the concept of it, enraptured on to knowing concerning it and so the hunger simply went on increasing.

To satisfy his desire, he borrowed his elder brother’s books for programming. a number of the essential languages like Pascal and Basic were schooled in class itself and also the respite he managed to be told from Google cake.

Interestingly, he had started secret writing once he was simply eight years previous. thus computer code had clearly become his love. And by the time he reached his tenth grade, he had created up his mind that he wished to require up secret writing for a living.

In 2009, Ritesh left for Kota to affix IIT and in no time he patterned that Kota was something however an area wherever one might learn secret writing. Hence, his dream of secret writing took a backseat and as he had plenty of your time to spare, he started attending Bansal Tutorials that his pa had got him registered into. the remainder of the time he accustomed simply chill and travel around plenty.

He even started writing a book and terminated up inscribing – ‘Indian Engineering Colleges: an entire reference book of high a hundred Engineering Colleges’ and it clad to become monumental on Flipkart and was oversubscribed move into a short time too. In fact, the tutorials he visited conjointly had this book and his image was right the quilt.

When he turned 16; Ritesh was chosen amongst the 240 youngsters elect a district of the Asian Science Camp command at the Tata Institute of basic analysis (TIFR) in metropolis. The camp was AN annual forum for pre-collegiate students World Health Organization aimed toward promoting discussion for the betterment of science within the region.

During that time; Ritesh thanks to the leverage of the free time conjointly accustomed travel plenty, and stayed in PG’s, budget hotels, etc. And since there was nothing left to interest him concerning Kota, he usually accustomed take a train to Delhi. He accustomed reside odd bed & breakfast (B&B) places and attend events and conferences to satisfy entrepreneurs and since he couldn’t afford the registration prices, he would usually simply sneak in.

And that is wherever it all started!

Life as AN Entrepreneur…!

1. Formation of Oravel

In 2011, he enraptured to Delhi with plans of commencing one thing of his own and at identical time to arrange for Saturday to maneuver to the United States of America for any studies.

Now, a refund then wasn’t a haul for him as a result of he had savings from Kota and also the cash was good; roughly Rs.15, 000 for a month.

But as luck would have it or sadly, Saturday ne’er happened. Later, he accustomed do nothing however meet and browse concerning businesspersons, start-ups, businesses, and significantly Airbnb!

[TRIVIA: – RITESH HAD JOINED THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON’S INDIAN field, however simply when 3 DAYS OF connection HE COULDN’T management HIS desire TO KICK-START HIS VENTURE thus HE TOOK A DAY’S LEAVE to figure ON THE PROJECT. AND strangely ne’er WENT BACK!]

Ritesh throughout his days he had seen and continuously felt that budget hotels in Asian country didn’t even meet the terribly basic desires of a budget human. Hence, exploiting on this chance, he started his 1st venture in 2012 – Oravel Stays! it had been AN somebody of bed and breakfast stays across Asian country.

In simple terms, it had been meant to be terminus for brief and midterm rent payment for bed and breakfast joints, non-public rooms and maintained flats.

In a substance of no amount, he conjointly open funding of Rs.30 lakhs from endeavor Nursery, AN accelerator firm that brought along a bunch of storied investors to nurture start-ups.

With enough cash in his pockets, he started functioning on his new found interest and at identical time, he conjointly conferred his plan at the Thiel Fellowship – a worldwide contest planned for college kids beneath the age of twenty. He achieved to achieve between the highest 10 winners World Health Organization received a add of $100,000 [over 2 years (about Rs.2.7 lakhs / month)] in addition as steering and alternative properties, to drop out of faculty and build a start-up, from PayPal co-founder and Facebook capitalist  Peter Thiel.

With the new found out confidence, he started operating even additional strictly however to his arduous luck, their business model didn’t appear to be learning. And the maximum amount as he tried, things simply weren’t falling in situ.

1. Transformation to OYO Rooms

Then he went into the thinking mode and recognized that, the largest pain on the face of this earth whereas travel was to seek out a decent, cheap “available” building to remain in however like continuously, most folks terminated up staying in an exceedingly stinking place with equally stinking employees, food, etc. that killed the full trip.

This conjointly recapped of the time he accustomed face lodging issues throughout his visits. there have been times once he was oversubscribed a stinking place for an enormous quantity and many-a-times he used notice a pleasant place in an exceedingly very little quantity.

This create him interested once more, to make a web however social community to bring info concerning all smart places along on one platform.

And as a final resort Ritesh tweaked his gift business model and in 2013 re-launched Oravel as “OYO Rooms”.

That was a thought to create India’s largest chain of economical, young, consistent rooms with AN intention to make the good chain of no add-on rooms which could not have Spa, Gym etc. just like the star hotels however can live up to the essential standards & high expectations for costs like ne’er before.

OYO Rooms extended bent on approach buildings or a hotel owner might conjointly reach bent on them, and OYO’s team would visit the place, audit the building to grasp the changes that may be needed to standardize the property as per OYO standards, and shares identical with the hotels. And to creating positive the hotels met their expectations.

Stirring aside from the funding, marketing, reaching bent on the property house owners and investors, a number of the stepping stones that he Janus-faced was – a mixed reaction from friends and family around him. however even so, that modified with time!

After the launch, Ritesh even got on board Bhawna Agarwal, former chief executive officer at e-commerce firm Seventy millimetre for crucial business advising.

This time they set to play it sensible & safe, and created certain to leave no stone right-side-up. They tied-up with a dozen numbers of hotels and with their facilitate offered rooms to its customers.

And it worked precisely as planned! Things began to retrieve for them and to satisfy the strain they eventually had to extend their team of 2 to fifteen and so twenty-five.

In 2014; the corporate raised Rs.4 metal from speed of light Venture Partners (LSVP) and DSG shopper Partners, at a pre-money valuation (valuation of a corporation before investment or financing) of Rs.14 Cr.

What impressed Ritesh even additional was that, by currently the corporate was continuance gross bookings of over Rs.1 Cr. per month. Since then; OYO Rooms has gone on to become India’s 1st technology driven network of standardized branded budget hotels and has conjointly wide expanded  its presence to 350+ hotels and over 4000+ rooms in twenty cities like Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Goa, Jaipur, Hyderabad, etc., and conjointly aims to expand any to a thousand hotels in twenty five cities by 2015 finish.

The OYO Rooms app ranks the best-rated applications on Google Play Store and has conjointly been registered collectively of the highest 3 apps within the ‘Travel & Local’ class. because it has been downloaded not but one hundred sixty,000 times and over twenty,000 bookings are created thus far.

Ritesh Agarwal could be a faculty drop-out

To follow his passion of changing into a capitalist, he registered into Indian faculty of Business & Finance, Delhi however left faculty mid-way to start out his own company. He was hesitant concerning his call however from the start was terribly clear concerning what he wished to try to to and took some powerful decisions to accomplish his dreams.

He has bound accolades to his credit

Ritesh Agarwal, World Health Organization is simply twenty three years previous, has bound awards and identifications to his name, a number of that are:

– Forbes “30 beneath 30” within the shopper school sector

– high fifty entrepreneurs in 2013 by TATA 1st Dot powered  by NEN awards

– TiE-Lumis Entrepreneurial Excellence award in 2014

– Business World young enterpriser award

Apart from AN enterpriser, he’s AN author, a programmer and a good verbaliser

At a young age, his book- an entire reference book of high a hundred engineering faculties, was revealed and shortly became a trade edition. Agarwal started secret writing at the tender age of eight and at the age of sixteen, he got an opportunity to be one in every of the 240 students World Health Organization were a district of AN Asian camp command at the Tata Institute of basic analysis. He was the youngest speaker within the panel of assume EDU panel, 2014 and could be a constant at VC Circle events.