OYO founder Ritesh Agarwal joins hands with VCats to promote entrepreneurship in India

Ritesh Agarwal, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of OYO, has joined hands with Mumbai-based incubator Venture Catalysts (VCats) to help promote entrepreneurship across Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities in the country.

"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," Agarwal, who will work as an adviser and mentor with the incubator, said in a statement.

He also said he was confident that the next big idea would come from a tier 3 or tier 4 town.

VCats has a deep presence in over 30 smaller Indian towns such as Jaipur; Raipur, Bhubaneswar, Vizag, Rajkot, and Ahmedabad, amongst others.

“We are thrilled to be collaborating with Ritesh," said Dr. Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, founder and CEO of VCats, adding that Ritesh’s insights will prove tremendously valuable to entrepreneurs as they continue to execute Venture Catalysts' plan to build a robust infrastructure for startups in all the Tier 1,2,3 and 4 cities across India.

His learnings will help many upcoming entrepreneurs that have potential to become the next Unicorn but have very limited access to the right support and mentorship, Sharma said.

VCats, which is now the world’s seventh most active early-stage investor and integrated incubator as per a ranking by Crunchbase of TechCrunch, is known for developing and nurturing early-stage startups. This has led to its discovery of startups across various sectors ranging from FMCG to Fintech.

Some of these include startups such as Beardo, BharatPe, Fynd, Supr, and  Coutloot.