Softbank-backed OYO's founder and CEO, Ritesh Agarwal, recently met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his mother to invite them to his wedding. The 29-year-old businessman plans to wed in March of this year.
Ritesh Agarwal is an Indian entrepreneur who is the founder and CEO of OYO Rooms, a hospitality company that offers affordable and standardized accommodations. He was born on November 16, 1993, in Bishama Katek, a small town in the Indian state of Odisha.
Agarwal dropped out of college at the age of 17 and started his first venture, Oravel Stays, a budget accommodation aggregator, in 2012. In 2013, he received a $100,000 Thiel Fellowship, a program founded by Peter Thiel that supports young entrepreneurs, which allowed him to move to Silicon Valley and work on his business. In 2014, Agarwal pivoted Oravel Stays to focus on the budget hotel segment, and rebranded it as OYO Rooms. OYO has since grown to become one of the largest hotel chains in India, with over 23,000 hotels and 1 million rooms in more than 80 countries. The company has raised over $3 billion in funding from investors such as SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Agarwal has been recognized as one of the youngest self-made billionaires in the world and has been featured on Forbes' 30 Under 30 Asia list. He has also been awarded the Business World Young Entrepreneur Award and the TiE Global Entrepreneurship Award.
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