Generally, drop-outs are viewed with disdain in our country, which accords the importance of the highest order to degrees. This rule does not apply to Peter Thiel and the cohort of 20 he picks each year for the Thiel Fellowship. First awarded in 2011, the fellowship recognises 20 creative entrepreneurs and rewards them $100,000 (approx Rs 56 lakh) to drop out of college and work on their ideas in a real-world environment.
Ritesh Agarwal, founder of Oravel.com, is the only Indian who has made it to the 2013 list of ‘20 under 20 years of age’. Born in Cuttack, Odisha, Agarwal set up Oravel in 2011. Oravel advertises itself as an alternative to picking hotels. “It is an online marketplace for unique and affordable rooms at half the price of hotels in India,” says Agarwal. Details at www.oravel.com. Oravel is loosely based on Airbnb, a marketplace in the US for room rentals.
He also runs OYO Inns, a chain of affordable, no-frills tech-enabled inns. The aim here is to build a chain of affordable inns that provide branded and standardised services, he informs.
Says the University of London, India campus drop-out, on Oravel’s services, “We make healthy service fees on every conversion. We have over 3,500+ rooms majorly across north India and we have been growing at a phenomenal speed in the last four months.” Agarwal raised his seed investment from Venture Nursery, led by Shravan Shroff and Ravi Kiran. He also informs us that his initiative’s growing at three digit per cent. Agarwal was managing his concerns operating from New Delhi.
High hopes
Having just started his fellowship on June 1, Agarwal hopes to connect with some amazing mentors, work closely with them and build phenomenal value for his business establishments. Though his parents were apprehensive that Agarwal dropped out of college after just two days of classes, they are now proud that he has joined Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Sachin Tendulkar, in that order, and has brought laurels despite shunning college.
“I love the fact that as far as how the money should be utilised, there are no strings attached. My probable mentors like Elon Musk (Tesla, Paypal co-founder), Sean Parker (Facebook founder), Peter Thiel himself and other top-level Silicon Valley executives are going to help things quite a lot at Oravel. I am hoping to pick up the nuances of production, distribution, marketing, fundraising and other aspects of management,” signs off Agarwal.
Details about the Thiel Fellowship is available at www.thielfellowship.org.
— shilpa.vasudevan@newindianexpress.com