New Delhi: An unfortunate minor incident when Ritesh Agarwal was locked out of his apartment in Delhi has changed his life forever.
Ritesh, then 17, decided to establish the largest chain of hotels.
Four years later, at the age of 21, Ritesh is founder and the chief executive of OYO Rooms- India's largest budget hotel chain which is present in over 100 cities across the country with 20,000 rooms under its umbrella.
As part of his business, Ritesh has also developed an app, through which guests can book rooms and get directions of the hotels.
His aim to build the company, was so that people can enjoy a good standard of hotels at a reasonable price.
''The early days of this business were 'extremely difficult' as no one was ready to consider that this could be a technology business in the future'', he said.
As part of the future plan, he focuses on recuperating customer feedback through his developments and optimistic ideas.
He was born in Cuttack and was raised in a middle class Marwari family. Agarwal dropped out of his college to start his own company without his family knowing of this move.
Ritesh was always motivated from young age. He started writing computer code at the age of eight. By the time he was 3, he started helping people in designing websites.
After some years, he also wrote a book on engineering colleges which was aimed at helping students to choose the right course and college in India.
He has often talked to media how he was afraid of his parents finding out that he had dropped out of college.
