Ritesh Agarwal – Founder and CEO of OYO Rooms | Inspiring Success Story

Ritesh Agarwal was born to a business family on16 November 1993 in Bissam Cuttack, in Odisha state, India and brought up in Titilagarh. Ritesh Agarwal is the CEO and founder of OYO Rooms. Ritesh attended the Sacred Heart School in Raygada, Orissa.

Ritesh completed his school from St. Johns Senior Secondary School. He moved to Delhi for college in 2011 and with strong intentions of starting up something of his own. He dropped out of college to pursue his dream of becoming an entrepreneur.

Agarwal joined the University of London’s course at Indian Business School. At the age of 13, Agarwal started selling SIM cards. Ritesh was the winners of the Thiel Fellowship program 2013, a 2-year program initiated by Peter Theil, PayPal Founder and an early investor in Facebook.

Ritesh received a grant of $100,000. Agarwal was the first Asian to have obtained Thiel Fellowship. Agarwal started his entrepreneurial journey when he was 17 years old.

Ritesh started Oravel Stays, a budget accommodation portal for booking budget hotels. Oravel Stays was an aggregator of break and bed for stays across India. Then he launched as OYO Rooms in May 2013. OYO Rooms is an Indian hotel brand that aggregates hotel rooms. OYO also operates in Malaysia and Nepal.

Ritesh received a fund of 30 lakhs from an accelerator firm, VentureNursery, which brought together a bunch of investors to nurture startups. Later in 2014, OYO Rooms raised 14Cr from DSG Consumer and 4Cr from LightSpeed Venture.

His estimated net worth to be approximately INR 7253 crore according to Hurun Rich List 2020. Ritesh is an Indian entrepreneur, and also the youngest billionaire after Kylie Jenner, an American media personality.