Tales of a Decacorn: The Importance of a Global Mindset – Future Forward Gold Sponsor JPIN Investment Catalysts Ltd in conversation with OYO Founder Ritesh Agarwal

The third and final day of Future Forward: UKBAA Investment Summit focused on Connected Investing.  The day shone a spotlight on some of the most exciting tech clusters and successful investors from around the country and it looked at how an effective, nationally connected ecosystem is crucial for economic growth moving forward.

Following a welcome from UKBAA Managing Director Roderick Beer, the day began with ‘Tales of a Decacorn: The Importance of a Global Mindset’. The Fireside Chat was hosted by our Gold Sponsor JPIN Venture Catalysts Ltd and saw co-founders Gaurav Singh and Nayan Gala in conversation with OYO Hotels & Homes founder and CEO Ritesh Agarwal.

JPIN Venture Catalysts Ltd is an early-stage startup investment network in the UK with a footprint in 40 Indian cities and 4,500 angel investors. They have invested $150 million in over 110 deals and achieved more than 30 exits within 5 years. Their vision is to connect every major city in the UK to build the largest UK-India Investment and Growth Corridor for startups.

27-year-old Ritesh is the first resident Asian to be accepted to the Thiel Fellowship and he began his entrepreneurial journey after staying in more than 100 bed and breakfasts, guest houses and hotels, and realising that there was a lack of affordable and good-quality hotels in the unbranded budget hotel category.

In 2013 he launched OYO (now known as OYO Hotels & Homes and one of the few Decacorns in the world) and Ritesh is now one of the youngest and most successful founders in the world. OYO has footprints in more than 800 cities across 80 countries including the UK, US, Europe, India, China, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Japan.

Talking about his own journey as an entrepreneur and what he’s seen from other entrepreneurs, Ritesh shared:

“Entrepreneurs who aspire to build a company with the metric of valuation, probably end up nowhere close to that. For us it was, frankly, we were having so much fun solving problems for small hotel owners and house owners, that we just wanted to do more and more of that. Over time we ended up doing this for 43,000 hotels and 150,000 houses across the world, and we’re probably only about 1% done.”

With the pandemic hitting lots of businesses hard in 2020, Ritesh talked about how they managed to continue operating and hitting profit. He said:

“In June we actually had more profit than we’ve ever made in any month of June in this business, just because the kind of demand we have seen in holiday homes has rapidly increased in comparison to private hotels.”

The UK was one of the first places that OYO expanded to outside of India and when asked why, Ritesh explained:

“The language and the ability to get global exposure in the UK comes next, if not equal, to that of the United States. I genuinely believe that small towns provide a big opportunity.”

Moving on to the future and how technology will impact on hospitality, Ritesh commented:

“We believe, in the new world that we live in, increasingly technology companies will create substantial value in every business. If you think about entertainment, it was supposed to be movie theatres and production houses. Today entertainment has changed completely to streaming platforms and the likes. Retail used to be retail stores now the mainstream of retail now is e-commerce. In the same way we feel that in hospitality technology-driven franchising that we’ve been trying to create in hotels and holiday homes, will become the standard in the years to come. We’re happy to be the market leaders in this process.”

During the Fireside Chat Ritesh also spoke about how entrepreneurs in the UK and India can benefit from the investment corridor, and he shared his thoughts on how entrepreneurs can access India.

You can watch the full Fireside Chat at the top of this article and if you bought a ticket for Future Forward, you can watch many of the events by visiting https://futureforward.ukbaa.org.uk and logging in. 

Find out more about our Gold Sponsor JPIN Venture Catalysts Ltd at https://jpinvcats.envestry.com.