Ritesh Agarwal

Ritesh Aggarwal- A college dropout, who once wanted to sit for an engineering exam, Ritesh today heads among the most valuable start-up by a person who never studied beyond school.

He even sold sim cards to survive, afraid his well off family would end his entrepreneurial dreams and summon him back home to Odisha if they knew of his struggles.

In Kota(Rajasthan), where he was ostensibly preparing for his IIT entrance exams, Ritesh says he couldn't wait every weekend to slip out to Delhi and meet those doing their own thing.

This 19-year-old had traveled for months staying at budget hotels, attended customer calls everyday and immersed himself in every possible experience to learn about budget hotel customers and their expectations. That was the kind of on-the-ground learning that helped him pivot Oravel to Oyo.

Ritesh started his entrepreneurial journey when he was 17 years old. He dropped out of college and launched his first start‐up Oravel Stays Pvt. Ltd. in the year 2012. Oravel was designed as a platform to enable listing and booking of budget accommodation. Being an avid traveler, he soon realized that the budget hospitality sector lacked predictability. Therefore, he pivoted Oravel to OYO Rooms in 2013 with the key proposition of offering affordable and standardized accommodation.

According to a research carried out by CB Insights for The New York Times, OYO Rooms is among the companies that may be the next start-up unicorns. The company is backed by investors like the Softbank Group, Greenoaks Capital, Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed India

Ritesh Agarwal was selected for the “20 under 20” Thiel Fellowship in 2013. The Thiel Fellowship is a two-year program wherein fellows receive $100,000 and mentorship from the foundation’s network of tech entrepreneurs, investors and scientists.

Meet 21 year old, Multi- Millionaire here.