Ritesh Agarwal is the founder of OYO rooms, also known as OYO Hotels. He founded OYO rooms when he was 20 and became a young age billionaire in India. Later, he is listed in the Forbes 30 under 30 list for Asia.
In 2020, Ritesh became the second-youngest self-made billionaire in the world after Kylie Jenner. His net worth was $1.1 billion in February 2020.
OYO is India’s largest hospitality chain of leased, franchised, and budget hotels. OYO expanded its business globally and currently serving many South Asian, Arab, and American countries.
The Early Life of Ritesh Agarwal
Ritesh Agarwal was born on November 16, 1993, in Odisha. His family comes from a small town of Odisha named Bissam, Cuttack. After completing high school, he moved to Delhi in 2011 for college studies, but he dropped out of that plan and was selected for Thiel Fellowship from Thiel Foundation in 2013.
Founding OYO rooms
During 2010, he travelled a lot and found several hotels and guest houses in India. As a result, he realizes that more affordable and good-quality budget hotels are for tourists and travellers than famous hotels and resorts.
Ritesh started an online hotel booking platform named Oravel Stays for booking budget hotels by inspiring from it. After that, he renamed the firm to OYO rooms in 2013. Now Ritesh is running the most prominent hospitality chain globally.
OYO services and platforms
- OYO provides its services through well-designed online web applications and Mobile applications.
- Both the platforms are straightforward to use.
- They run its membership program through its platform and give various offers to its customers.
- OYO is running over 300+ cities of India, and globally it is serving in 80+ countries.
- OYO partnered with 43000+ hotels globally.
- Currently, OYO has 17000+ employees globally.
Fund Raising from Different Ventures
- Initially, To start OYO Rooms, Ritesh Agarwal received funding of $1,00,000 from the Thiel fellowship program under Peter Thiel’s foundation.
- In September 2018, OYO raised $1 billion. In February 2019, OYO received $100 million funding from Chinese vehicle for hire company Didi Chuxing.
- During October 2019, OYO has raised funding of $1.5 Billion from Softbank Group, Lightspeed venture partners, and Sequoia India.
Business Model of OYO
OYO’s business model is slightly different. At the start of OYO, it had worked on an aggregator model. However, he made changes to his business model. Now OYO is working on the franchise model. OYO asks hotel and resort owners to partner with them and offers their rooms to the customers at a competitive price.
The company does not own hotel properties. It’s just partnered with Hotels and renovated their hotel and rooms according to the standard they had decided for their customer. They are more focused on user experience not rather than rooms and their prices.
For this, OYO charges a 22% commission every month from the hotel’s owner. The commission may vary according to the service and rooms offered to the customers. That commission is the only revenue that OYO earns.
Ritesh Agarwal is genuinely an ideal and inspirational personality for young entrepreneurs who wants to achieve something great in their life. His unique ideas and how he is passionate about his dreams make him one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world.
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