Ritesh Agarwal is one of the youngest and most successful entrepreneurs in India. He is the founder of OYO Rooms, a global hospitality company that changed the way people stay while traveling. He started his business journey at the age of 19 and built a billion-dollar company. His story is full of passion, hard work, and belief in his dream.
Early Life and Family
Ritesh Agarwal was born on 16th November 1993 in a small town called Bissamcuttack in Odisha. He belonged to a middle-class family and grew up in a simple environment. From a young age, he was very interested in technology and business. He loved to explore, read books, and understand how things work. After finishing school, he moved to Delhi for college. He got admission into the Indian School of Business and Finance, but he soon realized that he wanted to start something on his own. So, he dropped out and decided to follow his dream of building a business.
Early Struggles
Ritesh always wanted to do something different. When he was just 18 years old, he started traveling across India on a very small budget. He stayed in many cheap hotels and faced many problems like dirty rooms, poor service, and no proper facilities. These problems gave him an idea. He thought—why not create a company that helps people find better budget hotels?
With this idea, he launched a startup called Oravel Stays. It was similar to Airbnb and helped people book affordable homestays online. But after some time, he realized that just listing hotels online was not enough. The real problem was the bad quality of hotels. So, he changed his business model and started working on something bigger.
Start of OYO
In 2013, Ritesh launched OYO Rooms, which means “On Your Own.” His goal was to help budget hotels improve their quality and service. He partnered with small hotel owners, trained their staff, improved their rooms, and gave them technology and branding support. In return, these hotels became part of the OYO network, and customers could book them online easily.
The special thing about OYO was that it offered clean and reliable rooms at low prices. Customers started trusting the brand. Slowly, more hotel owners joined OYO, and the company began to grow.
First Big Success
OYO received its first investment from VentureNursery and later from Lightspeed Venture Partners. But the biggest success came when SoftBank invested in OYO. After that, OYO started growing very fast. In 2015, OYO had more than 10,000 rooms in over 100 cities in India.
Then, the company started expanding into other countries like China, Malaysia, and Nepal. By 2018, OYO’s value became more than 1 billion dollars, and it became one of the fastest-growing startups in India. In 2019, OYO entered the US and Europe and added thousands of new hotels around the world.
Challenges and Failures
Like every successful entrepreneur, Ritesh also faced many challenges. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the hotel industry was badly affected. Travel stopped and bookings were cancelled. OYO faced big financial losses and had to lay off many employees. People started questioning the company’s future.
There were also legal problems in some countries because of different business rules. As the company grew fast, managing everything became difficult. But Ritesh never gave up. He kept working hard and made changes in the company to bring it back on track.
OYO’s Present and Future
Today, OYO is running in more than 80 countries with over 100,000 hotels and homestays on its platform. The company is using new technologies and business ideas to give better service to its customers.
Some of the latest innovations by OYO include OYO Wizard, which is a loyalty program that gives special deals to repeat customers. OYO has also started OYO Workspaces for office needs and OYO Townhouse for premium budget stays.
OYO’s Growth (2015–2024)
This graph clearly shows how OYO Rooms grew rapidly from 2015 to 2024. From just 1,000 hotels in 2015, OYO expanded to over 100,000 hotels worldwide by 2024. It’s a strong example of what consistent vision and hard work can achieve.
The story of Ritesh Agarwal proves that anyone can achieve big dreams with passion, courage, and never giving up. He started from a small town with limited resources, but he believed in his idea and worked day and night to build it. Even during hard times like the pandemic, he stayed strong and continued improving his company.
At Bada Business, we also believe in supporting such hardworking entrepreneurs. We proudly support small companies and new startups, because we believe they are the future of India. Our goal is to make the Indian economy stronger by helping more people like Ritesh succeed.
