Story of Oyo

Ritesh Agarwal started a budget accommodation portal, Oravel Stays, for booking budget hotels. It was accepted into the accelerator program by Venture Nursery in September 2012, and later was one of the winners of the 2013 Thiel Fellowship program, receiving a grant of $100,000. The company was launched as OYO Rooms in May 2013.

By September 2018, the company raised $1 billion. In July 2019 it was reported that Agarwal purchased $2 billion in shares in the company, tripling his stake. His net worth in 2020 was estimated to be approximately $1.1 billion (INR 7253 crore) according to Hurun Rich List 2020. He is also the youngest self-made billionaire after Kylie Jenner, in the world.

Early Days

Ritesh during his early days moved to Kota for preparation of IIT. He used to attend Bansal Tutorials and during his spare time used to prefer travelling.

During 2011, Ritesh started preparing for SAT. But fortunately or unfortunately SAT never happened, so he used to spend his time attending entrepreneurial and start up sessions and would take lot of interest reading about startups and especially Airbnb.

Thiel Fellowship

With sufficient money in his pockets, he started working on his new found interest and at the same time, he also presented his idea at the Thiel Fellowship – a global contest intended for students under the age of 20. He managed to reach amongst the top ten winners who received a sum of $100,000.

Oravel to Oyo

Ritesh during his days felt that the hotels lacked what a traveler would expect. Capitalizing on this Ritesh launched Oravel Stays. OYO Rooms was earlier powered by BistroStays, an AirBNB Clone by NCrypted. The business model adopted by Oravel Stays was a complete bed & breakfast type vacation rental website, a platform for listing and booking of budget accommodation. Later, after receiving more funding he shut down Oravel.com website and started Oyo Rooms which adopted the ‘Uber for X’ business model.

Oyo raises $25 million …

Ritesh Agarwal Net Worth: $1 billion …

Oyo went on to become one of the biggest players in Hotel Rental Services and is one of the biggest competitors of big players like AirBnB.

Reference

https://gadgets.ndtv.com
https://www.yosuccess.com/success-stories/ritesh-agarwal-oyo-rooms/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritesh_Agarwal#cite_note-18