To support the India’s growing startup ecosystem, Ritesh Agarwal, who is the founder and CEO of Oyo Rooms now will work as an advisor as well as mentor with Mumbai-based incubator Venture Catalysts (VCats). He together will work with Dr Apoorv Sharma. He is the founder of VCats to promote entrepreneurship across the country’s tier 1, 2 and 3 cities. He also helps India to become ‘atma nirbhar’ that is self reliant.

Through this, Agarwal with Sharma, major goal are to share their entrepreneurial experience with other entrepreneurs. Sharma was the first person who backed Agarwal when he started Oravel Stays in 2012.

Agarwal said – “I started Oyo at a very young age and at a time when the ecosystem was not fully developed. I was fortunate enough to get some great mentors like Dr Apoorva, Bejul Somaia, and many others, who guided and supported me in my start-up journey….now that I have established myself as an entrepreneur, I think it is time to give back to society and support entrepreneurs like them.”

By this collaboration, Agarwal wants to seek out young entrepreneurs from smaller towns of India. Agarwal added “I am confident that we will be able to discover the next big idea from a tier 3 or 4 town.”

Dr Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, founder of Venture Catalysts said- “Ritesh’s insights will prove tremendously valuable to entrepreneurs as we continue to execute our plan to build a robust infrastructure for start ups in all the Tier 1,2,3 and 4 cities across India. His learnings will also help many upcoming entrepreneurs that have potential to become the next Unicorn but have very limited access to the right support and mentorship.”

According to the Crunchbase ranking, VCats is world’s seventh most active investor. They are famous for developing and nurturing early-stage startups. They have a strong presence in more tgan 30 smaller Indian towns such as Rajkot, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Raipur, Bhubaneswar, and Vizag. They are even successful in discovering startups such as BharatPe, Fynd, and Coutloot and others.