Quotes from Ritesh Agarwal

I started Oyo right out of my high school, with limited resources.

Stay away from family when you are working on a startup.

At heart, I am still the guy who loves tinkering with machines and writing code.

People regardless of age are able to do a good job if they're inspired by the leader they work with.

My parents always wonder why I work round the clock and I never had an answer, until one day I came across a street full of Oyos. I saw so many families and friends on holiday there. This made me happy - life had come full circle in that moment!

Oyo is not a market place. Oyo is a fully fledged hotel chain that leases and franchises assets.

Everybody has a dream of being the most impactful company in their segment worldwide.

My mom is surely worried that the fact that I don't have a college degree will impact my chances of finding a bride.

From my perspective, as an entrepreneur, one is wired to take risks. You, of course, need to be smart and take calculated risks, and then do all you can to make it worth the risk.

As I grew up, I was born and brought up with a view of, if you can get an engineering degree, getting a job is remarkably easy and that's the ambition you should have.

Showing your ID while entering or doing a manual check-out when leaving - are these the things you do at home? No. If I have them in hotels, how will you feel at home during your stay then?

There is always room for improvement in experience and it can be achieved if one listens to the customers carefully.

There are causes that are dear to me personally including encouraging entrepreneurship, improving livelihoods as well as helping humanitarian rescue and relief efforts.

We have, at various levels, invented how hospitality experiences would look like. At lot of levels, we have transformed how the hospitality experience would be by processes and technology.

For me as a young kid, my parents took me to random cities. I stayed at my relatives and the biggest trouble I had was watching TV on my own.

Coorg will be the new Switzerland, Goa will be the new Thailand. If we predict these trends correctly, while market size may shrink, we will have a good opportunity to use our model.

I had gone from a small town in the eastern corner of India to San Francisco, and I was very lucky to get that.

There are so many people who are dependent on me. You know, setting expectations, and then feeling afraid. But I am a firm believer in the fact that good work has always been recognized.

I had three other siblings, and I was the youngest of the lot.

While one is in the process of coming up with a truly innovative solution, it is essential to keep an open mind.

For me, it is about having a passion for solving a big problem and leaving a huge impact. Once you have that, everything else falls into place.

For people who earn on an average about RS 15,000 a month and who travel a lot, if the salary is late then the landlord will throw him out. I know how life is after that because I have been there.

I grew up in Rayagada in Odisha, in a middle-class family. But I always had the entrepreneurial bug.

Hygiene is going to be a key consumer question post-COVID. Our sanitized stay offerings and commitment towards ensuring minimal contact-based check-in is an important step.