Feel at home: A home away from home with standardised service is Ritesh Agarwal's USP

RANK 2, 5-YEAR-OLD START-UPS, COOLEST START-UPS / OYO ROOMS

The rain came down unexpectedly, making the drive more picturesque. The narrow winding roads from the ruins of the haunted city of Bhangarh, in Rajasthan’s Alwar district, took you past a fort, small villages and a caravan of camels before reaching the 240-year old Burja Haveli, a heritage hotel. This writer, and his two friends, arrived to a musical welcome that June evening; two dancers draped in traditional lehengas swayed, light-footed, across the lawn to the rhythms of Kajra Re. Traditional food and free-flowing Tennessee whisky only added to the delightful taste of Rajasthani hospitality. Inside the room on the first floor, a red OYO goody bag was neatly placed on the table. It held a soap bar, shower gel, shampoo, body lotion, a red pen and a pad.

Hotel aggregator OYO Rooms standardises India’s unbranded hotels and then markets them on its website and app the toiletry it supplies to every hotel is one small effort at standardisation. OYO also ensures air conditioned rooms, breakfast, TV, spotless linen, clean washrooms, and free Wi-Fi. That is this Indian start-up’s value-add. While most aggregators just aggregate rooms and distributes them, OYO audits and, at times, invests in them to ensure a minimum standard a “predictable experience”.