Ritesh agarwal




Ritesh Agarwal founder and CEO of OYO Rooms, was born on 16th  of November 1993, 


in Bissamcuttack  Rayagada, Odisha, India. Ritesh  Agarwal was born in a business class 


family. From his childhood, he was passionate  about computer coding. One day, Ritesh 


borrowed his elder brother's books for programming, he wanted to learn some basic computer 


languages like Basic and Pascal which were also taught in his school. when ritesh was 8 year 


old, he started coding. 




In 2009, Ritesh went kota for join IIT and after some time  ritesh realised, that Kota is not a 


good place for doing coding. he started attending Bansal Tutorials and in his free time he used 


to travel around the city. Even he started writing book named "Indian Engineering Colleges: 


A Complete Encyclopedia of Top 100 Engineering College". this book got more popularity 


at that time.



In 2011, he moved to Delhi for starting up something new and also for the preparation of 


SAT exam. Then, money was not big problem for him because he had savings from Kota and 


the pocket money which was around Rs 15000 per month. but unfortunately he did not appear 


in SAT exam. Hence, he used to nothing but meet entrepreneurs and want to known more 


about start-ups, business and especially Airbnb. 



Now, Ritesh felt that finding a budget hotel is very difficult for all budget travellers. In 2012, 


he started his first venture "Oravel Stays", in which he was providing clean beds and 


breakfast facilities to their customers in low price across India. He also secured funding of Rs 


30 lakhs from Venture Nursery and other investors. At the same time, he was also preparing for 


a global contest Thiel Fellowship to present his idea. He got 10th position and also got $100000 for two years. 



After that, Ritesh went into the thinking and felt that, dirty rooms, beds, lack of facilities, are 


the main problem for the travellers. he was remember that, at Delhi he spent more money for 


a untidy room and he had also got a good room in a little amount. This got him motivated again,


to make an online platform to bring information about all good places together. In 2012, 


he relaunched his business model "Oravel" as "OYO Rooms", which means"On Your Own 


Rooms". 



In india, OYO Rooms is also known as OYO Hotels & Homes for Indian vocations rental 


company. In starting OYO Rooms was consisted many economy friendly and budget rooms 


and hotels. After some time ritesh spread his business to some famous countries like; UAE, 


Nepal, China, brazil, Mexico, UK, Philippines, japan, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, 


Vietnam, The United States of America, etc. 



Their company investers are SoftBank Group, Didi Chuxing, Greenoaks, capital, Sequoria india,


Lightspeed India, Hero Enterprise, Airbnb and China Lodging Group.


OYO rooms affiliated partners with their hotels always aim to give similar services across the 


country to their every customer. 



In march 2016, OYO acquired Qlik pass’s team. Rahul gupta and Rishi swami are the founder of


 acquires Qlik pass and leader of data science department. 



In march 2018, OYO acquired Novascotia Boutique Homes, Chennai based service rooms and 


apartment operator. This is the first major buyout by the OYO Rooms at that time. Same time 


they also acquired Weddingz.in, a online marketplace where people find the best place for 


weddings at best prices. 



In 2019, OYO and bedbank comes together as a joint-venture. At the same time they also work 


with Yahoo Japan as a joint-venture. In this year they they announced one by one big 


anouncements for their stock holders. 



Now, the net worth of "OYO Rooms" is $1.1 billion (INR 7253 crore). He is currently 


the youngest self made billionaire in the world.