The Rise of Ritesh Agarwal: PART-1

Sup Geeks!!😎

Introducing The Figur8 newsletter, a tldr (or say 🤔….. “what we can infer”-type of a content. Call it whatever you want, once you start enjoying 😁) of the Figuring Out podcast by Raj Shamani (Props to him).

This will take you in a POV journey (much like a VR headset) of an entrepreneur’s thought process, with many insights and analogies, all in a 10min read every Sunday.

So, let’s get going…

A brief Intro (before we dive into the gist of today’s issue) on Ritesh Agarwal:

1. Founder & Group CEO-OYO.

2. Agarwal is an alumni of the Thiel Fellowship.

3. His net worth in 2020 was estimated to be approximately $1.1 billion.

   (That is $1.1 billion more than my net worth🤯)

4. Ritesh Agarwal recently got married 💞 to Geetansha Sood.

   (The ceremony was nothing less than some “top investors summit”, with majority of the “Bigges” of tech industry as attendees)

Key Takeaways 📝

Call it TL;DR if you will.

1. People say that publications writing about entrepreneurs and startups, make starting a business look easy. So, Ritesh’s take on this was

(Personally, all the fancies (💰, 🚀) and whatnot of the startup world is what makes me want to start a business of my own). So yeah, that’s there…

2. He recalls being the youngest of the four siblings kind of gave him that extra edge of being inspired by someone older than you right at home and also for him to pursue his career, what he calls as “Non-Asian parent’s dream” path because his other three siblings were following the other path, the “Asian parent’s dream” path.

3. He says

no excuses (like generation gap and all that bs💩) or else you fail in the very first step.

This was a great takeaway and hits me really hard (damnnn). You’ll probably cry while trying to convince your parents (it takes a lot of hard work 🥲, but definitely worth it 👌) but don’t cry while convincing your investors or customers, that will make them lose trust on you instead (The Figur8 Life tips 😉).

4. Like every other successful person out there, he believes in networking while your growing (and you should constantly keep growing), says

(Relatable, but can’t find those type of people in college just yet, but gotta keep searching like-minded people/communities.)

5. He says

Networking will probably make you not walk the path alone for a long time (“You’ll never walk alone” [Rip Liverpool FC 💀]).

6. !! He made it clear that he doesn’t recommend you to leave your house (if there is no need to do so) in your beginning years. All that bs you read online stating Ritesh said so is bs💩. !!

7. Indian economy is fuelled by Micro, Small and medium enterprises (MSME’s) https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1884734

8. He believes that there exist 2 types of businesses, not businesses rather let’s say 2 types in which you can establish a business (focus is on MSME’s here):

1. Competing with an already existing MSME business.

   e.g here: starting another hotel in the same area of an existing hotel.

2. Empowering the MSME businesses in focus.

   e.g here: a platform that enables customers to find hotels nearby or wherever.

And he is the true believer of Type-2.

It’s like a non-zero-sum mindset game you’re playing in the case of Type-2. What most people believe is that having a zero-sum mindset is the only way to generate money (people refer it to as the essence of capitalism).

(My thoughts on this and Elon Musk’s too (kinda similar), is that world isn’t a single pie where for you to get a piece of it other person has to lose their share of it (in some case it might be) rather it is an ever growing pie or let’s say multiple pies (where a pie grows from a piece of the parent pie). You get a piece but not necessarily someone else has to lose it (you create it) rather your piece grows into a full pie and so on. (Call this The Firgur8 🍰analogy))

9. Always ask yourself “what I can reflect from this experience?”.

10. Emphasis on the fact that listening to your customers is the best way to grow/improve/retain customers etc.

So, Ritesh and his OYO team did conduct Townhall sessions with hotel owners regularly where he got to hear both sided views (things to improve and things hotel owners where happy with), this made his life easier.

This is similar to what Airbnb Founders (Brian or Joe) did with House owners, they flew to visit house owners to hear feedbacks.

This is not only for Hospitality industry (the two examples I stated above were not the only ones where customer feedback was important, those are the only ones I remembered while writing this post 😅) but for any Business.

First to understand who your target audience are then talk to them about problems and their views on how it could be solved or how they want it to be solved.

(Oh, I forgot about my entrepreneur thinking teacher also talk about it and make us do an assignment where we had to talk to our potential customers for the startup idea, we had proposed in the 1st week of the 8-week class we had. We ended up making a google form to collect data form potential customers instead 😅).

Join in so that 10 more insightful points in PART-2 hits your inbox next Sunday.

Until then Bye Bye Geeks👋👋. I gotta go study for my end sems and play NFS No Limits 🤣.

Keep creating value.👍

And share (you may just Retweet or share this link) this content to like minded people caz we are playing a positive sum game.

Feeling left out of the entrepreneurial loop? Don't worry, we've got you covered! Our newsletter delivers all the best bits of our hour-long podcasts in just 10 minutes of fun reading.

Subscribe now and never miss a beat!