Oyo founder, Ritesh Agarwal who received the esteemed Business World Young Entrepreneur Award, is the youngest second billionaire in 2022. He started the well-known company Oyo and is a humble person and an excellent student. He has emerged as a modern-day hero and a source of inspiration for many aspiring young business people.
| Full Name | Ritesh Agarwal |
| Nick Name | Ritesh |
| Date of Birth | 16th Nov. 1993 |
| Occupation | Businessman; CEO, OYO |
| Educational Qualification | Graduated from St. johns senior secondary school |
| Marital Status | Single |
| Birthplace | Bassam, Cuttack, Odisha |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Net Worth | $1.1 billion |
Oyo Rooms made around 40 billion Indian rupees in sales in the fiscal year 2021. Due to the impact of the COVID epidemic, this was a considerable decrease from the previous year. The sale of lodging services accounted for most of the company’s revenue.
According to their site demand measurements, the cheap Indian hotel company Oyo had a high percentage of return user impressions in 2019 of more than 70%. The repeat rate and organic demand accounted for almost 90% of user impressions for the firm, indicating a high degree of customer satisfaction.
Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal created Oyo Rooms in 2013 as an Indian cheap hotel company comprising leased and franchised hotels, apartments, and living spaces.
Early age
In Bassam Cuttack, Odisha, India, Oyo founder, Ritesh Agarwal was born into a Marwari family and raised in Titilagarh. Ritesh was educated at the Sacred Heart School in Rayagada, a southern Odisha city in southern Odisha, where his family operated a modest store.
The Oyo founder, Ritesh Agarwal began selling SIM cards when he was just 13 years old. He attended college in Delhi after graduating from St. Johns Senior Secondary School in Kota, Rajasthan, on Bundi Road. He dropped out of college, and in 2013 he was chosen for the Peter Thiel Fellowship (The peter Thiel fellowship is for students aged 22 and under, and it provides them with a total of $100,000 over two years, as well as counseling and other tools, to drop out of school and pursue alternative activities, which might include scientific research, starting a business, or working on a social movement.).
Career
Oyo founder, Ritesh Agarwal founded the online hotel reservation service Oravel Stays to cater to travelers on a tight budget. It was accepted into Venture Nursery’s accelerator programme in September 2012, and it later won a $100,000 grant as one of the 2013 Thiel Fellowship program’s winners. The firm made its debut as Oyo Rooms in May 2013.
2018 saw the firm raise $1 billion by September. According to reports, Agarwal tripled his stake in the company by purchasing $2 billion worth of shares in July 2019.
According to Hurun Rich List 2020, his net worth was estimated at roughly $1.1 billion (roughly Rs. 7253 crores) in 2020. He is, behind Kylie Jenner, the second-youngest self-made billionaire in the world as of February 2020.
Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal is included in Forbes’ list of Asia’s 30 under 30.
The idea of Oyo
With scruffy hair, a scruffy beard, and muddy shoes, Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal began programming software at the age of eight. He later joined a global annual forum for advancing science in Asia, wrote a book on the top 100 Indian engineering schools, established a consulting business for foreign companies entering India, launched Oravel Stays, an Indian version of the US-based online lodging service Airbnb, dropped out of college, and became the first Indian Thiel fellow to pivot Oravel.
Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal is tackling the issue of locating reasonably priced yet uniform lodging with Oyo Rooms, which in his opinion, has never before existed internationally. Budget hotels typically don’t have standardization, but large hotels have, although they are more expensive. Running Oravel Stays, Agarwal had been staying at bed-and-breakfast serviced flats every day, largely in Gurgaon, when he realised that the problem wasn’t the lack of standardisation, but rather the difficulty in obtaining inexpensive accommodations.
Since December 2013, Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal has been standardising hotels to the bare minimum, starting in Gurgaon. Every two days, Oyo Rooms’ mobile app, which focuses on geolocation and rooms and has real-time photographs, audits each hotel it manages.
Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal may then compare the verified findings with client input and make improvements as a consequence. In an industry overrun with travel agents, the model is disrupted, allowing the startup to proliferate to more than 2,500 hotels in 125 locations throughout India in only one and a half years.
Achievements
As a backup, the Oyo founder, Ritesh Agarwal also made the decision to take the SAT and pursue further education in the US. With the money he had saved from his pocket money and his love of technology, he launched his first company, Oravel Stays, Pvt., in 2012 when he was just 18 years old. The firm wants to offer superior hotel accommodations and services around the nation at extremely reasonable costs.
Since they offer erratic non-standard services at first, the firm ran into a lot of issues with the hotel sector. In May 2013, Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal launched Oyo Rooms to address this issue. Oravel Stays had never been as sophisticated as this. The acronym means On Your Own Rooms.
The organization seeks to offer the best services at reasonable costs to approximately 8000 hotels and more than 72,000 rooms. The amazing thing about this business is that while being connected to more than 8000 hotels, it does not really own any of them. He was given 30 lakhs of rupees by investors to support his companies because of his excitement and tactics, and at the age of 23, he was named the second-youngest millionaire in the world.
Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal was included as one of Forbes’ 30 under 30. In 2014, he also received TiE-Lumis Entrepreneurial Excellence Awards.
When visiting India, US President Donald Trump hailed the self-made millionaire. Trump spoke to Agarwal as a “great businessman” and inquired about the number of hotels he owns. Agarwal said, “330 and 40,000 globally.” Trump said, “That’s wonderful. I am aware of your business. well done “.
Net worth
The year 2022 is seeing Oyo founder, Ritesh Agarwal’s net worth reach $1.1 billion. At just 21, Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal surpassed the previous record for the second-youngest self-made billionaire in history.
While everything was going well for him, Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal’s net worth fell following the pandemic attack.
The main source of Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal Salary’s income in 2022 was his own business, Oyo Rooms, which offered great hotel accommodations and amenities at incredibly low prices. Ritesh Agarwal’s net worth climbed by 22% from the prior year in 2022.
Oyo founder, Ritesh Agarwal’s cost ownership in Oyo
Due to the $2 billion investment round in 2019 and a series of buybacks in 2020, the price to acquire shares of founder and CEO Ritesh Agarwal is the highest in Oyo Hotels & Homes. It was an uncommon occurrence in 2019 when the creator of an Indian firm purchased a stake from early investors prior to an IPO.
Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal holds a total of 33.15% of Oyo, of which 24.94% is owned through RA Hospitality Holdings (Cayman) at a price of 101.23 per share, and the remaining 8.21% is the sole portion of ownership that has been acquired at a low price of $0.01 per share.
In contrast, Softbank’s cost of acquisition for its 46.62% pre-IPO investment comes out to 34.81 per share. In 2018, Oyo additionally secured $100 million from Cayman Islands-based A1 Holding Inc, a company that is under the ownership of Singapore’s Grab, a ride-hailing company, and whose purchase cost is 63.52 Singapore dollars per share. Similar to this, Sunil Kant Munjal, who invested with SoftBank in a Series D round in 2017, owns 5.9 crore shares at a price of 17.73 per share, while China Lodging Holdings (HK) owns 1.81% at a price of 63.52 a share.
The hotel booking startup has submitted its draught papers to the market regulator for an initial public offering of Rs. 8,430 crores ($1.1 billion), which would include an offer for sale (OFS) of Rs. 1,430 crores and a new issue of equity shares totaling up to Rs. 7,000 crores. SoftBank, Grab, China Lodging, and Global IVY Ventures all have holdings in the OFS.
Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal’s high cost of acquisition is a result of RA Hospitality Holdings’ purchase of 13,169 shares through a private placement in the same year at a price of 37,53,444.31 per share, along with 655 equity shares from Lightspeed Venture Partners and 257 equity shares from Sequoia Capital, in a $2 billion deal that was financed by international banks.
The next year, RA Hospitality acquired 388 shares from the Oravel Employee Welfare Trust for 38,11,076.22 each share in addition to purchasing 75 shares back from Anuj Tejpal, who was one of the founding members and the global chief commercial officer at Oyo.
Interesting facts about Oyo founder, Ritesh Agarwal
➡️ Tech-savvy and motivated developer Oyo founder, Ritesh Agarwal excels in his field. Unlike many other programmers or coders, he began his coding career when he was just 8 years old.
➡️ Peter Thiel, the first Indian citizen to get such a prestigious prize, got it when he was just 19 years old.
➡️ Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal used to put up the Oyo while working 16 hours a day. This demonstrates that persistence pays off in the end and is essential for success.
➡️ On his trip to India, Donald Trump also paid tribute.
➡️ Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal started selling SIM cards when he was just 13 years old, and today, at the age of 27, he has a staggering net worth of billions.
Controversies
👉 Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal is accused of defrauding Manish Sinha, who co-founded the firm with him, in the early stages.
👉 Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal entered into agreements through his company Oyo with hotel owners in the US under which the owners’ buildings would be rebranded under the Oyo name in exchange for payment and a guarantee of income.
However, Agarwal omitted the fact that Oyo is not permitted to operate a franchise business in the state of California, for which Oyo was fined $200,000 by California regulators in March 2019. Washington officials determined Oyo made proposals to several hotel owners and managers without legal registration, and they issued the corporation a cease-and-desist order.
👉 A businessman from Chandigarh filed an IPC 420 (cheating) 120 B complaint against Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal in Dera Bassi in September 2020 for fraud and conspiracy (criminal conspiracy).
👉 10,000 Indian hotel owners reacted negatively to Oyo. When the hotels sign up for Oyo, they claim that Oyo takes up half or more of the income through fees that are not made public.
👉 Hotel owners in Bangalore, Mysore, and other Karnataka towns allegedly submitted police complaints accusing Oyo of fraud in October 2019. However, the latter was successful in his petition for a Bangalore stay order in one case.
Conclusion
In this article, we have mentioned all about Oyo founder, Ritesh Agarwal. There’s more to Ritesh Agarwal the founder and CEO of Oyo Rooms than his faded appearance and humble behaviour. You don’t have to have graduated from IITs or Ivy League Universities to be successful in life, as Oyo Founder Ritesh Agarwal has proven.
