Ritesh Agarwal proved and demonstrated throughout the time that no matter how young you are, you can always dream big and turn those ambitions into reality—being the second youngest billionaire globally, he is not only an inspiration for young people but mid-age citizens as well. Let me take you on this beautiful journey of Ritesh Agarwal, a man who dropped out of college, and how he became a billionaire at such a young age?
Early years before Ritesh Agarwal became a billionaire
All of this started 26 years ago, back in 1993, when Ritesh Agarwal was born in Bissam Cuttack, a city which is based in Odisha state, but later, he was raised in Titlagarh. When he was only 13 years old, kid Ritesh began vending SIM cards. After completing his high school studies from the St. Johns Senior Secondary School. He decided to shift Delhi back in 2011, so he can further pursue his college education. But soon he realized that he is just wasting his time in college that he is only an average student and wouldn’t be able to compete against the nerd of class and his parents are going to be outraged to see him fail, so why not make the best out of the moment and do something he loves to do? So he finally decided to drop out of college. That’s when back in 2013, he was given the Peter Thiel fellowship.
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How did OYO come into existence?
When Ritesh was a ten-year-old young kid, he loved technology and was such a tech-savvy, and Ritesh focused all his entire psyche towards doing the coding. I am sure most of the young kids and teens want to travel around the world, and that’s what exactly Ritesh’s dream was to travel and explore the world. So he put his plans into motion and started traveling and exploring different states of India. He started noticing one thing that it is almost next to impossible to find a competitive price room in a hotel where he can get adequate service, and then he acknowledged that he might not be the only one facing this situation.
People on a tight budget who love to travel are also facing the same crisis. Because he was on budget and could only stay at an affordable hotel room, but they were not providing their patron’s essential aids like Air Conditioning or Wi-Fi; the Bed mattress was uncomfortable to sleep on, and there were no breakfast facilities even if there was a breakfast option then the food was not up to the mark.
This started something new. It gave him an idea of why not incorporate his love for travel and tech and make a solution out of it for this bizarre problem faced by mostly every Indian. But for a person who was not accustomed to the business world and entrepreneurship, it was more than a difficult task. But Ritesh, however, didn’t abandon this idea and jumped into making a strategy to present his ideas in front of the investors. When he got the investors on board to lend him $ 100,000, it was his first step towards making something out of himself and putting his strategy into action and starting his journey in the business world.
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The first step towards launching Oyo and starting Oravel Stays
Oyo didn’t come into existence until much later. To start his career as an entrepreneur, Ritesh began Oravel Stays service; the primary focus of Oravel Stays was to assist citizens to track down the nearest hotel and reserve an affordable hotel room for themselves. Oravel Stays might be able to help people in tracking down reasonable hotel rooms near them. Still, it took him away from the actual path and fundamental goal of providing people good services at affordable prices.
So Ritesh started to dig deeper to resolve this issue. He would go and stay at different hotels in distinct states of India so he can check out their hospitality service. After staying at various hotels and doing all the necessary research, he concluded that the primary issue in hotel hospitality corporations relies on the fact it is not ideal and up to the people’s expectation of high- standard services, and it is moreover questionable. He determined to put an end to this issue by starting and assisting people with the help of OYO.
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What exactly does OYO mean and the services that it provides to its customers?
Do you know that the meaning behind the OYO is “Own Your Own“? After realizing the main problem, Ritesh started to remodel the Oravel Stays concept and services and turned it into the OYO. Soon his company began delivering the Indian citizens competitive prices hotel rooms with ideal and up to people expectation services.
According to last year’s stats, OYO provides its services in more than 800 cities. Around 23,000 hotels are working with them globally, 850,000 rooms inside these hotels, and you can also book and choose from 46,000-holiday homes Internationally. Globally they are on number three who are connected to hotels to give hospitality services. This entire idea started from one hotel in Gurgaon, but now OYO has spread its web worldwide.
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A young mind to take a lesson from
He might be young, but when Ritesh was only 23, he entered the billionaire club. Now in 2020, OYO net worth is $ 1.1 billion. Young people can learn from him to never give up because before succeeding, Ritesh failed three times, but he was strong and motivated enough never to give up and keep on pursuing his idea.
He keeps on involving and evolving when he realized that Oravel Stays is not providing what he exactly planned when he started his business. So he kept on doing his research and found what exactly he was missing and worked on it and then launched OYO. Sometimes it is not a bad thing to acknowledge that you are not good at study, but your dreams and talent rely somewhere else, and you should pursue them.
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