Case Study: A) Discuss On How Ritesh Agarwal Transformed His Vision To Become Youngest Entrepreneur

CASE STUDY
a) Discuss on how Ritesh Agarwal transformed his vision to become youngest

entrepreneur.
Ritesh Agarwal’s entrepreneurial journey began in 2012, with the goal of designing a unique
solution for the budget-driven travellers across India. He was only 17 when he started
Oravel Stays Pvt Ltd, becoming one of the youngest entrepreneurs in the country. Even
though he saw failure with Oravel Stays he didn’t lose his vision and was still motivated to
create a new way of renting affordable rooms for people. His ideas have opened a lot of
opportunities for lots of Indian Households. OYO has created job opportunities and a way of
earning for millions of people. It was a paradigm shift in the Indian hospitality market.
People could afford cheap stays while even renting their places and enter in the hospitality
market.
Ritesh during his days had seen and always felt that budget hotels in India didn’t even meet
the very basic needs of a budget traveller. Hence, capitalizing on this opportunity, he started
his first venture in 2012 – Oravel Stays. It was an aggregator of bed and breakfast stays
across India. In simpler terms, it was meant to be a destination for short and midterm
rentals for bed and breakfast joints, private rooms and serviced apartments.
He saw his idea was a main pain point for travellers in India, and from there his vision
formed into opening a chain where they could rent budget rooms easily. His idea was
unique and original and the consumer’s wants. Next, he aimed high and set his sights on
capturing the enormous tourism industry in India and beyond. He didn’t just want to start a
bed and breakfast in a city with high tourism but all over the country. He gained knowledge
in the sector and identified major concerns of the travellers as well as hotels, before starting
his business. At a time when every student of his age is targeting top colleges he dropped
out of college, wanting to focus and start his own business. The willingness to stake
everything on hand to get what you want was factor that very few people have and made a
huge contribution to his success. He had the ability to take a step back and restart even
when he was faced with failure and learning from the failures is a great accomplishment in
itself. After failing in his start-up - Oravel Stays, he had the courage to restart the business
from the very beginning. He has the determination to face any consequences in his journey
towards his goal, his hard work and patience paying off with the success of OYO.
Ritesh Agarwal has set an example for the youth worldwide. At the age of 26, his net worth
is $1.1 Billion which is 7,877 crores. His chain is the second largest in China and Number 1 in
India. He also always took care of his stakeholders at difficult times. He was among 45
Indians in the Forbes fifth annual "30 under 30" list. OYO Rooms has gone on to become
India’s first technology driven network of standardized branded budget hotels and has also
widely expanded its presence to 350+ hotels and more than 4000 rooms in 20 cities like
Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Goa, Jaipur, Hyderabad, etc, and also
aims to expand further to 1000 hotels in 25 cities by 2015 end. Additionally, their OYO
Rooms mobile app has been downloaded more than 160,000 times and more than 20,000
bookings have been made so far. The app ranks amongst the best-rated apps on Google Play
Store and has also been listed as one of the top three apps in the ‘Travel & Local’ category.
b) Suggest how Ritesh on how start-up can be turned into leading organisation in the
industry?
Even if an idea is great, there’s a big difference between having a great idea and creating
a successful start-up company, making a leading organisation in the industry. There are
various factors that helped OYO to become this.
 The Business Plan - Oyo started as a hotel aggregator and used to lease some rooms
and sell them under its brand name. However, it changed its business model from the
aggregator to the franchise model. It involved partnering with hotels, asking them to
operate as a franchise, and selling their rooms to customers at competitive prices.
From a company that collects data on affordable stays and linking customers to them
it changed to franchise where it standardised all rooms and services with similar
prices.
 Securing appropriate funding - Ritesh Agarwal became the first Indian to be
chosen for Thiel Fellowship, where he was given $100,000 grant by early
Facebook investor and PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel. The fellowship is given to
entrepreneurs below 20 years of age who skip college for two years to start
running their own business. With this capital he started small managing 11
rooms in a hotel in Gurgaon and then expanding when he got efficient and
proper knowledge.
 Becoming a Marketing Expert - With his experience with Oravel Stays, he had
an idea about what consumers want and the deficiencies in his market plan. He
turned OYO into a standardised form where it transformed the hotels and
rooms according to the needs and expectations of customers, and providing a
comfortable stay at affordable prices in contrast to what a customer usually
experienced before at same prices.
 Partnership with hotels – OYO’s original idea was to connect travellers with hotels
and providing information to them. Ritesh Agarwal saw it early that there was no
standardised services provided, and came up with the idea of partnering with them
and making franchises instead of just becoming a platform for travellers to get data
from. It helped them successfully become a first of a kind of chain in the country.
 Right investments. – OYO early in its life invested in areas regarding beautification of
spaces, standardization of services, in systems, tools and processes, and technology
to enhance service delivery, rather than marketing and discounting. As a hotel brand,
they had consciously chosen not to complicate their dependency on channel partners
but instead building a strong distribution network by investing in self-operated
channels. Unlike traditional offline hotel brands, they had the know-how and
expertise to build inventory-management systems, and also market and sell these
room-nights online.
Oyo has truly revolutionized the hotel industry with its efficient use of technology. It has
redefined living spaces and taken the user experiences to the next level. With its quick
booking facility, hassle-free rental experience, and convenient pricing, it has transformed
the way people stay away from homes. Its growth is unstoppable with its
continual expansions to newer markets while it has strongly built its brand name as the
most prominent hotel network with both high quality and affordability.

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CASE STUDY

a) Discuss on how Ritesh Agarwal transformed his vision to become youngest

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