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Writer's pictureDeepak Bhatt

Inspiring Journey of OYO Rooms


The concept of funded startups is not new in India yet the idea of a 19 year old entrepreneur starting one provides motivation. The innovation and technology adopted by a young entrepreneur who started young is highly inspiring for all the youngsters dreaming to start their own venture. The young CEO of Oyo Rooms, Ritesh Agarwal has created a mark for himself by obtaining a funding of 25 Million dollars for the branded budget hotel listing venture in India.


Oyo Rooms is a venture that has budget hotel listings and the venture has been the brainchild of Ritesh Agarwal who has become the first Asian to obtain the Theil fellowship in 2013 when he was just 19 years old.  Oyo Rooms was his business venture after he researched his service proposition by staying in most budget hotels, guest houses and inns in India. The company based in New Delhi is the first of its kind hotel network in India.  


The venture is now an emerging branded budget hotel network in India. Agarwal initiated his career through the venture Oravel Stays which aggregated Bed and breakfasts all across India, the website was a clone of an existing peer-to-peer lodging website. The Fellowship that he obtained later paid him $100,000 that he used to create his start-up. This was a seed funding for his venture Oyo Rooms and later on he raised additional funding through other investors. The venture was the fulfilment of his dream venture which was to establish the first branded budget hotel network and thus Oyo Rooms was created.


The research for his Startup began very early for Agarwal. He started staying at all hotels and inns across India and travelled extensively to understand what types of budget hotels, guest houses and inns exist around India. He then began his quest for developing his venture.


The company is today a 100-employee company and has a valuation of $100 million. The company raised $25 million from a San Francisco based investor along with its existing investors LightSpeed Ventures, Sequoia and DSG Consumer Partners.


The concept of Oyo Rooms is a fresh and innovative one. It mainly works as a virtual hospitality brand in India. It acts as a platform to collect guesthouses and budget hotels and makes the inventory discoverable along with enabling online booking. The branding of the company provides a consistency to these inns and guesthouses like a franchise model. Thus it acts as a managed marketplace that assimilates properties. The hotels and guesthouses are available all over Southeast Asia.


The company has recently scaled up through the capital infusion and has facilitated the bookings for a high number of rooms across India. The listings include about 200 hotels countrywide on which they facilitate room booking.


The concept of Oyo is a unique one and they have a first mover advantage due to its good services. The industry of budget hotel listings and booking portal has just started developing in India and Oyo does not have many competitors. The downside of this is that customers still understand the concept and they are not going to readily avail these services especially those who prefer budget hotels.


One close competitor of Oyo that has recently emerged is Stayzilla that has a business model that lists properties as well as rentals; this venture also raised a funding of $15 million recently.


No matter what the success rate of Oyo is, the best part about the venture is the kind of innovation and technology that has been put up in this venture by Ritesh Agarwal and team.

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