OYO Hotels & Homes is the creation of 25-year-old Ritesh Agarwal; when travelling across India at the age of 17 Ritesh stayed in more than 100 bed & breakfasts and guest houses, he soon realised there was a serious lack of good value/good quality hotels in the unbranded budget accommodation category. The entrepreneurial Ritesh created Oravel Stays, a platform for listing budget accommodation, but budget often meant compromise on location, comfort and quality, Ritesh decided to fix this using technology and talent. Today Ritesh sets the overall strategic vision and direction for the OYO company which has spread its wings across the globe;OYO has the single aim of delivering value for hotel owners and customers alike. OYO works with independent hotel owners or accommodation providers to improve their financial returns whilst ensuring guests have a positive experience during their stay. OYO partners with the hotel and the transformation team move in, improving the appearance, facilities and comfort. OYO opens up growth opportunities for small to mid-sized budget hotels through the economies of scale provided in their proprietary technology, revenue management capabilities and operational expertise. It is a 100% “Made-in-India” business model and the first-of-its-kind worldwide.
Since arriving in the UK in October 2018 OYO has rapidly expanded its footprint in London, the pace of growth accelerated in the first quarter of 2019. In the London portfolio hotels have an average of 24 rooms, in June-July OYO boosted its presence in the capital and its suburbs by over a third, now offering over 1000 rooms across 30 hotels in locations as varied as Pimlico, Paddington, Ilford, Kings Cross, Camden, Bayswater, Wembley, Stratford and Southall. OYO has 2,504 rooms scattered over the UK,from Blackpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Skegness, Bournemouth, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast, Rhyl to Llandudno.
Now recognised as the world’s fastest growing hotel group,OYO is South Asia’s largest and China’s largest single hotel brand and second-largest hotel group, and the world’s 3rd largest hotel chain by room count.OYO today has footprints in more than 800 cities across 80 countries—including India, China, Malaysia, Nepal, UK, US, UAE, Indonesia, the Philippines and Japan. With 23,000 OYO-branded hotels representing 850,000 rooms under management, OYO is backed by leading investors, including the SoftBank Vision Fund, Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Ventures, Hero Enterprise, and China Lodging Group, amongst others. The company recently raised $1 billion and gained unicorn status.
Today, Ritesh is one of the youngest most successful entrepreneurs in the world and has been honoured at several forums for creating a global disruptor in the sector. Ritesh is the first resident Asian to be accepted to the Thiel Fellowship (started by Paypal founder Peter Thiel) and in 216 Ritesh joined the Forbes 30 under 30 list.