OYO Rooms: The People Behind The Scene

Ritesh Agrawal, the Founder of OYO

With his presence on Shark Tank India, Ritesh is now a household name. He founded OYO when he realised that there was a massive dearth of affordable and good-quality hotels in the unbranded budget hotel category. He was the first resident Asian to be accepted to the Thiel Fellowship (started by Paypal founder Peter Thiel) (Source: Times Now). 

A Strong Leadership Team

OYO has a strong senior leadership with an average tenure of eight years with the company.

Seven of the 14 people — of the top brass at OYO are IIT graduates, with three getting their degrees from IIT Kharagpur.

Five CXOs worked with McKinsey & Co. before joining OYO.

OYO successfully has managed to retain its core group of business heads for several years.

(Source: Inc42)

Governed by an accomplished Board

1. Aditya Ghosh: Aditya Ghosh (former president and whole-time director of IndiGo) is a seasoned business leader with over 22 years of experience.
2. Ritesh Agarwal: Founder & CEO of OYO Hotels & Homes& the first resident Asian to be accepted to the Thiel Fellowship (started by Paypal founder Peter Thiel).
3. Sumer Juneja: Managing director of EMEA & India at SoftBank’s investment advisors, will now serve on the board of OYO as a nominee director of Softbank.
4. Bejul Somaia: A Partner at Lightspeed India Partners LLP, a global venture firm with over USD 7 billion under management.
5. Deepa Malik: Padma Shri, Khel Ratna & Arjuna Awardee, is India’s first paraplegic woman biker, swimmer, rallyist & India’s first-ever female Paralympic medalist.
6. William Steve Albrecht: Former president of the American Accounting Association and Association of Certified Fraud Examiners and has served on boards of 10 corporates.
7. Troy Alstead: Worked with the Starbucks Corporation for 24 years having most recently served as Chief Operating Officer. He is also on the Board of Topgolf Group Ltd, Harley-Davidson Inc, and Levi Strauss & Co.

Backed by Marquee Global Investors

Source: Annual Report

Oyo in Aug’24 secured ₹1,457 crore (around $175 million) in Series G funding from investors like InCred Wealth, Patient Capital, J&A Partners, the Mankind Pharma family office, and ASK Financial Holdings. Serial investor Ashish Kacholia also participated in a recent funding round (Source: Entrackr).

In the next part, we have dived into OYO’s growth prospects, funding, valuation and IPO.

Happy Investing,
Team InCred Money 💸