Hello friends,
(To listen the biography in Hindi, you can watch the video given below)
We are all aware of OYO rooms which is a very successful start-up,having current valuation of nearly 360Cr. OYO rooms is the country’s largest budget hotel chain with about 50,000 rooms in 500 hotels all over India. Oyo doesn’t own hotels, instead, it ties up with certain hotels and acquires some rooms to be given out to people who want to avail OYO services. It focuses on standardizing the hotels in the non-branded hospitality sector. Oyo rooms is a very successful venture as it has managed to solve the issue of affordability, cleanliness and availability of budget hotels across all Tier-I and Tier-II cities in the country.
Sadly, we hardly know anything about the man behind OYO rooms.
Ritesh Agarwal born to a humble family in Cuttack
During the growing up days in Rayagada, Odisha, it was all about fun and learning for him but his ways were rather unconventional from those of other kids.
His fun elements including screwing around with the computer, and trying hard to find opportunities to make mistakes, so that he could learn new stuff. And doing that he gained a keen interest in software!
This started with the idea of it, moved on to knowing about it and then the hunger just went on increasing.
To quench his thirst, he borrowed his elder brother’s books for programming. Some of the basic languages like Basic and Pascal were taught in school itself and the rest he managed to learn from Google baba.
Interestingly, he had started coding when he was just eight years old. So software had obviously become his love. And by the time he reached his 10th grade, he had made up his mind that he wanted to take up coding for a living.
In 2009, Ritesh left for Kota to join IIT and in no time he figured that Kota was anything but a place where one could learn coding. Hence, his dream of coding took a backseat and as he had a lot of time to spare, he started attending Bansal Tutorials that his dad had got him enrolled into. The rest of the time he used to just chill and travel around a lot.
He even started writing a book and ended up inscribing – ‘Indian Engineering Colleges: A Complete Encyclopaedia of Top 100 Engineering Colleges’. This book turned out to become huge on Flipkart and was sold out in a while too. In fact, the tutorials he went to also had this book and his picture was right on the cover.
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. The camp was an annual forum for pre-collegiate students who aimed at promoting discussion for the betterment of science in the region.
During that time; Ritesh due to the leverage of the free time also used to travel a lot, and stayed in PG’s, budget hotels, etc. And because there was nothing left to interest him about Kota, he often used to take a train to Delhi. He used to stay at odd bed & breakfast (B&B) places and attend events and conferences to meet entrepreneurs and because he couldn’t afford the registration costs, he would often just sneak in.
He left his studies mid way to pursue his dreams.He has travelled all over the country and during such travels, discovered the problem with budget hotels. At the age of 17, he launched Oravel travels, modelled after Airbnb.
The very year he launched Oravel travels, he was nominated for the Thiel fellowship. The fellowship is designed by Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal and provided a college drop-out, less than 22 years of age, a sum of $100,000 to pursue a start-up dream. Needless to say, he’s the only Indian to receive it.
But Oravel travels didn't give him expected profit and unfortunately he has to quit that business.And soon he discovered that in India people can find the budget hotels easily but the problem is they are not receiving any proper facilities in it.He remembered his time,that sometimes he did not receive proper facilities in expensive hotels,and sometimes he receives very good facilities in budget hotels.
So, to counter other issues, he launched OYO. Since then; OYO Rooms has gone on to become India’s first technology driven network of standardized branded budget hotels and has also widely expanded its presence to 350+ hotels and more than 4000 rooms in 20 cities like Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Goa, Jaipur, Hyderabad, etc, and also aims to expand further to 1000 hotels in 25 cities by 2015 end.
Accomplishments…!
(To listen the biography in Hindi, you can watch the video given below)
We are all aware of OYO rooms which is a very successful start-up,having current valuation of nearly 360Cr. OYO rooms is the country’s largest budget hotel chain with about 50,000 rooms in 500 hotels all over India. Oyo doesn’t own hotels, instead, it ties up with certain hotels and acquires some rooms to be given out to people who want to avail OYO services. It focuses on standardizing the hotels in the non-branded hospitality sector. Oyo rooms is a very successful venture as it has managed to solve the issue of affordability, cleanliness and availability of budget hotels across all Tier-I and Tier-II cities in the country.
Sadly, we hardly know anything about the man behind OYO rooms.
Ritesh Agarwal born to a humble family in Cuttack
During the growing up days in Rayagada, Odisha, it was all about fun and learning for him but his ways were rather unconventional from those of other kids.
His fun elements including screwing around with the computer, and trying hard to find opportunities to make mistakes, so that he could learn new stuff. And doing that he gained a keen interest in software!
This started with the idea of it, moved on to knowing about it and then the hunger just went on increasing.
To quench his thirst, he borrowed his elder brother’s books for programming. Some of the basic languages like Basic and Pascal were taught in school itself and the rest he managed to learn from Google baba.
Interestingly, he had started coding when he was just eight years old. So software had obviously become his love. And by the time he reached his 10th grade, he had made up his mind that he wanted to take up coding for a living.
In 2009, Ritesh left for Kota to join IIT and in no time he figured that Kota was anything but a place where one could learn coding. Hence, his dream of coding took a backseat and as he had a lot of time to spare, he started attending Bansal Tutorials that his dad had got him enrolled into. The rest of the time he used to just chill and travel around a lot.
He even started writing a book and ended up inscribing – ‘Indian Engineering Colleges: A Complete Encyclopaedia of Top 100 Engineering Colleges’. This book turned out to become huge on Flipkart and was sold out in a while too. In fact, the tutorials he went to also had this book and his picture was right on the cover.
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. The camp was an annual forum for pre-collegiate students who aimed at promoting discussion for the betterment of science in the region.
During that time; Ritesh due to the leverage of the free time also used to travel a lot, and stayed in PG’s, budget hotels, etc. And because there was nothing left to interest him about Kota, he often used to take a train to Delhi. He used to stay at odd bed & breakfast (B&B) places and attend events and conferences to meet entrepreneurs and because he couldn’t afford the registration costs, he would often just sneak in.
He left his studies mid way to pursue his dreams.He has travelled all over the country and during such travels, discovered the problem with budget hotels. At the age of 17, he launched Oravel travels, modelled after Airbnb.
The very year he launched Oravel travels, he was nominated for the Thiel fellowship. The fellowship is designed by Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal and provided a college drop-out, less than 22 years of age, a sum of $100,000 to pursue a start-up dream. Needless to say, he’s the only Indian to receive it.
But Oravel travels didn't give him expected profit and unfortunately he has to quit that business.And soon he discovered that in India people can find the budget hotels easily but the problem is they are not receiving any proper facilities in it.He remembered his time,that sometimes he did not receive proper facilities in expensive hotels,and sometimes he receives very good facilities in budget hotels.
So, to counter other issues, he launched OYO. Since then; OYO Rooms has gone on to become India’s first technology driven network of standardized branded budget hotels and has also widely expanded its presence to 350+ hotels and more than 4000 rooms in 20 cities like Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Goa, Jaipur, Hyderabad, etc, and also aims to expand further to 1000 hotels in 25 cities by 2015 end.
Accomplishments…!
- Awarded the TiE-Lumis Entrepreneurial Excellence Award (2014)
- The first resident Asian to win ’20 Under 20’ Thiel Fellowship (2013)
- Named one of the Top 50 Entrepreneurs by TATA First Dot Awards (2013)
- Finalist of Global Student Entrepreneurship Awards-India
- Named one of the ‘8 Hottest Teenage Start Up Founders in the World’ by Business Insider (2013)
- World’s Youngest CEO at 17(recognized at 16)
Biography video of Ritesh Agarwal
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