SunstarTV Bureau: Economy has been growing rapidly over the past few decades, though the country has maintained a long tradition of entrepreneurship and wealth creation.
Launching a start-up is one of the boldest initiatives one can take in life. It requires dedication, consistency and a whole lot of innovation.
These are the following entrepreneurs from Odisha who have excelled in their respective fields and have brought glory of the State through their unique star-up ideas:
Ritesh agrawal
Ritesh agrawal is the founder and CEO of hotel listing start-up app-OYO Rooms with the network of 2,200 hotels operating in 154 cities across India. He started his career in 17 and now has raised $25 million (Rupees 150 Core) from Lightspeed, Sequoia and others to build a branded budget hotel network across India. OYO rooms also features among the companies which are tipped to become the next start-up unicorns according to CB Insights research’s findings, published in The New York Times. Agarwal has won many awards and accolades for his work including the Business World Young Entrepreneur Award. He is a regular speaker at entrepreneurial conferences and institutes across India and the world and a fellow of the Thiel foundation.
He stayed in more than 100 bed, guest houses and hotels to realize there was a massive dearth of affordable and good quality hotels in the budget hotel categories.
OYO was launched in May 2013 and today it is the world’s leading chain of hotels, homes and space.
Santosh Panda
Odisha gem Santosh Panda, the co-founder and the CEO of an event ticketing platform called Expara.com which handles about 1,000 transactions a day
Explara is the India’s leading experience market place to discover and buy tickets for events and activates. It expects revenue of Rs 50 core for financial year 2015-16 and recently has risen $500K (Rs 3.2 Core) in its Pre-Series.
Sontosh has massive experience in products development, consulting for FTSE 100 companies and start-up companies across the global.
Srikumar Mishra
Srikumar Mishra founder and CEO of Milk Mantra started in 2009 with the vision of creating an exciting, pure and healthy dairy products brand in India, whilst creating sustainable impact amongst network farmers.
He left a great successful global corporate career in 2009 build up own company.
Milk Mantra produces a range of dairy products. The company has a structured ethical milk sourcing programme, through which it collects milk from more than 20,000 farmers in 500 villages. Its products are available in Odisha, Kolkata and Jharkhand.
In June 2014 Milk Mantra has raised Rs.80 Core from venture capital funds. The company has a vision of creating an exciting, pure and healthy dairy products brand in India.
Bibek Kumar Biswal
Bhadrak native, Bibek Kumar Biswal, Founder-CEO of Studit, formerly known as Mind Tutors, is a hyperlocal edtech startup based out of Bhubaneswar and is currently functioning in many tier-II and tier-III towns of Odisha.
This app is a one-stop solution to provide home tutors at the doorstep and create a transparent tutor-student-parent interface. They are enforcing technology to bring discipline to this vastly unorganized sector of delivering quality home tuitions by remaining constantly vigilant in providing good home tutors.
Currently they are providing an offline mode of tutoring in twin-city, but in other towns, the mode remains online..
