A New App Wants to Make Hotels a Hit in India

At age 17, Ritesh Agarwal spent three months living out of a suitcase. His mom wanted him to get an engineering degree; instead, he began hopping among dozens of inns and bed-and-breakfasts throughout India, briefly manning reception desks and cleaning rooms at one of them. It was research, he says, for an online database of reliable places to stay. By the end of that trek, in 2011, he was convinced the industry’s biggest problem was a lack of consistent quality, especially among the independent budget hotels that make up almost 60 percent of India’s $7.2 billion lodging market. Respectable-looking exteriors often hid leaky faucets and stained sheets.

Agarwal’s solution was a hotel-booking app called Oyo Rooms, which lets room seekers choose from an approved list his team has selected based on certain minimum standards of service, cleanliness, and safety. The hoteliers agree to maintain those standards and a price. Oyo takes a 10 percent to 30 percent cut of the bookings. “When you book a room through Oyo, you know exactly what you’re going to get,” Agarwal says.