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OYO Rooms founder and
CEO Ritesh Agarwal may
seem young for a successful
entrepreneur. Agarwal
began coding software at
just eight-years-old, and by
thirteen had his own SIM
card-selling enterprise. At
17, he authored The Encyclopedia
of Indian Engineering
Colleges, which
went on to garner massive
sales. That same year, he
joined Worth Growth Partners
as the youngest CEO
in India.
At 17, he dropped out of
school to found Oravel
Stays. Essentially an Indian
version of AirBnB, Oravel
Stays was fueled by an Rs.
30 lakh investment from
accelerator Venture Nursery.
A year later, Agarwal
was selected for the Thiel
Fellowship, an entrepreneurship
program offering
funding and mentorship.
Ritesh Agarwal's Quote
“ We ignore the noise and the distractions.
We know our vision, our goals–and
we just focus on getting there before anyone
else can.“
As of summer 2016, OYO Rooms features 65,000
rooms across 170 cities. They expanded into Malaysia
in January 2016, a first careful step into
Southeast Asia. The company’s growth is fueled by
$125 million in funding from investors including
Softbank, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia
Capital, and Greenbacks Capital. Agarwal, their
twenty-two year-old founder and CEO, has received
wide attention, including a spot on Forbes’s 2016
30 under 30 in Consumer Tech.