26 years old founder and CEO of OYO, Ritesh agarwal’s success story is not a cake walk; a college drop out who dreamt of doing business, how often does this story succeeds? But he researched and identified the need of people,the need to get easily a safe and clean vacation home at affordable price. In the era of start-ups, he had to face several difficulties in trying to make his unconventional idea work. OYO was founded in 2013 but the zeal to do business inside Ritesh was from childhood when he used to sell sim cards. To pursue his passion of becoming an entrepreneur, he enrolled into Indian School of Business & Finance, Delhi however he did leave college mid-way to start his own company. At the mere age of 17, he launched Oravel travels, which he modelled after Airbnb. At a young age, his book- A complete Encyclopaedia of top 100 engineering colleges, was published and soon became a best seller. He has many accolades to his name. In 2013 he won $100,000 in Thiel fellowship for his idea of Oravel travels. He was in the Top 50 entrepreneurs in 2013 by TATA First Dot powered by NEN awards. He was the youngest speaker in the panel of Think EDU panel 2014 and is a constant at VC Circle events. He was awarded TiE-Lumis Entrepreneurial Excellence award in 2014 and Business World young entrepreneur award. He is in Forbes “30 under 30” in the consumer tech sector. OYO rooms has been one of the most successful startups in India, with the largest chain of budget friendly hotels. OYO has thousands of hotels, vacation homes and millions of rooms in India, Malaysia, UAE, Brazil, Mexico, UK, Philippines, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, the United States and more. The company is currently valued at $10 billion. In 2019, OYO registered a revenue of USD 951 million, a 4.5 times increase on a year on year basis, as compared to USD 211 million. In the year 2020, Agarwal’s net worth is $1.1 billion dollars as per the Hurun Rich List 2020 making him the world’s youngest self made billionaire after the famous Kylie Jenner.

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