Hello, I'm Rahul Tandon and welcome to Business Daily Meets here on the BBC World Service.

Today we're speaking to Radesh Agarwal, the CEO and founder of Oyo, a budget hotel chain,

which today is the largest in India. We're going to hear about his extraordinary journey in business

from selling SIM cards as a teenager. I was 13. I was going out and selling to individual shops who would then go out to sell to users.

To founding a multi-million dollar hotel empire.

There were so many people who were better business people, better finance people, better

hospitality people than I was. But probably nobody else wanted it as much as I wanted, and hence I worked hard.

And then experiencing its very near collapse.

I could see in front of myself the hard work of the many years,

suddenly at a place where you felt like it could all go away if there was not urgent action.

That's Ritej Agarwal, the founder of Oyo Hotels, my guest today here on Business Day.

Ritech was born in 1993 in Bissam Kuttak.

That's a small rural town nestled within dense forests in the eastern state of Odisha in India.

I grew up in the eastern half of India in the state of Odisa.

Now, it's a quaint little town where I grew up.

Majority of the population earns less than or used to earn less than $100 a year.

So not a very wealthy town, but a very happy town.

Ritej comes from a Marwari family, part of a prominent business community recognized

for its major impact on India's economy. The Marwari's originally come from the Marwar region of Rajasthan

in the northwestern part of India. That heritage is known to traditionally reflect a strong entrepreneurial spirit,

business acumen and resilience.

There was not sort of capitalism and wealth that you relate with that place.

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