HomeStartup NewsOyo's Ritesh Agarwal teams up with Venture Catalysts to promote entrepreneurship in Bharat

Oyo's Ritesh Agarwal teams up with Venture Catalysts to promote entrepreneurship in Bharat

OYO’s group chief executive Ritesh Agarwal has joined hands with incubator firm Venture Catalysts (VCats) and will step in as an advisor to support India’s growing startup ecosystem in tier 1, 2, and 3 cities.

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By Megha Vishwanath  August 18, 2020, 5:15:14 PM IST (Published)

Oyo's Ritesh Agarwal teams up with Venture Catalysts to promote entrepreneurship in Bharat

OYO’s group chief executive Ritesh Agarwal has joined hands with incubator firm Venture Catalysts (VCats) and will step in as an advisor to support India’s growing startup ecosystem in tier 1, 2, and 3 cities.

Dr Apoorv Sharma founder of Venture Catalysts was interestingly one of the first people who had backed Ritesh's vision when he started Oravel Stays in 2012 and set up OYO in 2013. According to Ritesh, this partnership has now come a full circle.



Ritesh Agarwal said, “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. Today, many former OYOpreneurs have started their new ventures and are doing really well for themselves. 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 added, ”Through this collaboration with VCats, I intend to enable the young entrepreneurs coming from the smaller towns of India, who do not get similar opportunities that their peers in bigger cities or metros get.  I am confident that we will be able to discover the next big idea from a tier 3 or 4 town.”

Dr Apoorva Ranjan Sharma said, “We are thrilled to be collaborating with Ritesh. He is currently on the board of MDI University and has been the first Asian to receive the Thiel Fellowship, which shows his journey, grounds up.  I was one of his early supporters, and am really happy to see his commitment to continue supporting students and young founders in India. 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.”

Dr Sharma, who has a PhD in incubation, has established over a dozen incubators and accelerators before starting VCats in 2015. As of today, the Mumbai-based incubator VCats has a presence in over 30 smaller Indian towns such as Jaipur; Raipur, Bhubaneswar, Vizag, Rajkot, and Ahmedabad to name a few. It has startups ranging from FMCG to Fin-tech such as Beardo, BharatPe, Fynd, Supr, and Coutloot as part of its incubate list.
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