Oyo's Global Game Plan

OYO, South Asia’s largest hotel chain, is on an expansion spree as it diversifies and enters new markets.

- Deepti Chaudhary

Ritesh Agarwal has always placed a premium on perseverance and hard work. The 25-year-old founder and group CEO of OYO Hotels & Homes has often credited these two qualities for his success. He should know. After dropping out of college and starting a hotels aggregator business as a teenager, he has built up his company to become the country’s and South Asia’s largest hotel chain. As his startup grew by leaps and bounds, he thought of reaching out to someone he believed would be ideal to help in the journey of OYO, valued at $5 billion today. And that person was Aditya Ghosh, the former president of InterGlobe Aviation, which operates IndiGo, India’s largest airline. It was almost noon on a sultry August day last year when Ghosh, 43, got to know from a friend that Agarwal wanted to connect. Ghosh didn’t give it much thought. It had been more than three months since he had stepped down from IndiGo—which he had nurtured for nearly a decade—and several people were catching up to discuss business ideas and challenges in the business, among other things.

A couple of days later, the two met at The Quorum, an upmarket members-only club in Gurugram. The first meeting started at seven in the evening and the two were still talking at 1 a.m., almost 90 minutes past the club’s closing hours. The second meeting the next day started at 8 p.m. and this time they were at the club until 2:30 a.m. But they were still not done. So Ghosh, who lived nearby, invited Agarwal home and the conversation continued until 4 a.m.