Founder and CEO of Oyo Rooms Ritesh Agarwal will work as an advisor and mentor alongside Mumbai-based incubator Venture Catalysts (VCats, to support India’s growing startup ecosystem. Agarwal will work with Dr Apoorv Sharma, founder of VCats to promote entrepreneurship across the country’s tier 1, 2 and 3 cities and help India become ‘atma nirbhar’ (self-reliant).
Agrawal along with Sharma focuses on sharing his entrepreneurial experience among fellow entrepreneurs. Sharma was one of the first people who had backed Agarwal when he started Oravel Stays in 2012 and established OYO in 2013.
Agrawal discussed his experience and how he intends to share it with growing entrepreneurship. “I started Oyo at a very young age and at a time when the ecosystem was not fully developed. I was fortunate enough to get some great mentors like Dr Apoorva, Bejul Somaia, and many others, who guided and supported me in my start-up journey….now that I have established myself as an entrepreneur, I think it is time to give back to society and support entrepreneurs like them,” he said.
Agrawal, with this collaboration with VCats, aims at focusing on entrepreneurs belonging to the smaller towns of India to support their ideas. “I am confident that we will be able to discover the next big idea from a tier 3 or 4 town,” added Agarwal, who at the age of 19 was selected for the “20 under 20″ Thiel Fellowship, established by renowned venture capitalist Peter Thiel to support innovative ideas of entrepreneurs under the age of 20.
“Ritesh’s insights will prove tremendously valuable to entrepreneurs as we continue to execute our plan to build a robust infrastructure for startups in all the Tier 1,2,3 and 4 cities across India. His learnings will also help many upcoming entrepreneurs that have potential to become the next Unicorn but have very limited access to the right support and mentorship,” said Dr Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, founder of Venture Catalysts.
Crunchbase ranks VCats as the seventh most active early-stage investor and integrated incubator in the world. It includes nurturing early-stage startups and is incorporated in over 30 smaller Indian towns such as Jaipur, Raipur, Bhubaneswar, Vizag, Rajkot and Ahmedabad. Discovered startups include BharatPe, Fynd and Coutloot among others.