ENTREPRENEUR SPECIAL ................What are the most inspirational success stories ever around the world?

What are the most inspirational success stories ever around the world?

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Meet Ritesh Agrawal, an indian enterpreneur and the founder and CEO of OYO Rooms. At 21, Agarwal is considered to be one of the youngest CEOs in India. Agarwal started his entrepreneurial journey at the age of 17.

He is, supposedly, the first Indian drop-out entrepreneur to have had a successful run. He is also the first resident Indian to win the Thiel Fellowship.He has never been to IIT but has recruited many from IIT and havard going against the traditional way of IITians doing everything in India.

One night he was locked out of his apartment in Delhi. It was an unfortunate minor incident that was to change his life.

Forced to check into a hotel he found himself in a situation he had already experienced several times while travelling in India.

"The receptionist was sleeping," he says.

"Sockets did not work in the room, mattresses were torn apart, the bathroom was leaking, and at the end they wouldn't let me pay by card."

"I felt if this was my problem, this had to be a problem for many travellers. Why can't India have a good standard of hotel rooms at a reasonable price?''

Four years later, at the age of 21, Mr Agarwal is now the founder and chief executive of Oyo Rooms - a network of 2,200 hotels operating in 100 cities across India - with monthly revenues of $3.5m (£2.3m) and 1,500 employees.

The firm works with unbranded hotels to improve their facilities and train staff, rebrands them with its own name, and from then on takes a percentage of the hotel's revenues.

The owner of the hotel benefits from a higher occupancy rate, thanks to Oyo's branding.

And as part of the business, Mr Agarwal has also developed an app, which guests can use to book rooms, get directions to the hotel, and once they have arrived, to use the hotels amenities, for example to order room service.

Tough journey

Despite such rapid growth, he says the early days were "extremely difficult".

"No one would believe that this could be a technology business in the future," he says.

But some people did believe in him. A similar idea - which eventually evolved into Oyo Rooms - won him a coveted Thiel Fellowship - a programme sponsored by PayPal co-creator and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel - which pays for 20 teenagers each year to stop studying and try to set up a business instead.

He used the funding from the fellowship to start the business.

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The firm launched in June 2013 with just $900 (£586; €799) a month, working with one hotel in Gurgaon near Delhi.

"I used to be the manager, engineer, receptionist for this one hotel and also deliver stuff in hotel rooms," says Mr Agarwal. "At night I would write codes to develop our app and improve our website. But alongside this I was also building strong teams because I knew I wanted to scale this up. ''

But the only way he could persuade investors that it was a worthwhile idea was to show them just how bad some budget hotels in India were.

"I took our first investor to the hotel we had developed and the other hotels where there were many problems. He saw the conviction in us and felt good about investing in something which he saw could make a difference.'' recalls Mr Agarwal.

Now the business has grown, it has become much easier to attract investors, and the firm recently secured $100m from Japan's Softbank.

Looking ahead

He hopes to create the world's largest network of hotel rooms.

Ritesh is still the youngest person in his own company

Currently, his focus is on making improvements based on customer feedback, and he remains optimistic about expanding the company at home, saying India's increasing smartphone and internet penetration offers "huge potential".

For those keen to emulate his success, his advice is to "start early".

"Start really fast and, if you fail, you will learn and the chances of success in the next venture will increase," he says.

Source:http://www.bbc.com/news/business...

Anurag Tripathi, Figuring out Life by Trial and Error

FROM QUORA