Ritesh Agarwal, founder & CEO of the hospitality unicorn OYO, has set up his own investment firm called Aroa Ventures in Singapore which will be looking to invest in early-stage startups working across consumer, tech, and leisure industries. 

There are no details as to if the company has already fueled capital into any startup yet. Aora Ventures site (1) noted that the investment firm would be willing to invest $500k to $5 million in its portfolio companies, which would comprise of startups with proven unit economics, a 20% YoY growth rate, and $1-10 million in annual revenue. 

As per Aora Ventures filings, the firm was registered last year with Ritesh Agarwal and Thomas Hufnagel as two shareholders through the RACo Holding Company but was later taken over with 100% by Agarwal, who now has the complete control of the company. 

In addition to capital, Aora will also be assisting its portfolio companies in accelerating growth and delivering better risk-adjusted returns.

 Helping startups grow

The company will be headed by Gaurav Gulati, former COO at Innov8, and co-founder at Purist. 

“Our focus is broadly defined, enabling us to invest in a spectrum of business models including: innovative retail experiences, enabling technologies, and SaaS and infrastructure platforms. We like to get involved early in a company’s life cycle (Seed and Series A) when entrepreneurs need experienced partners to navigate the tough journey ahead,” as stated on their website.

Earlier Snapdeal co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal went down a similar route and launched their investment vehicle called Titan Capital that invests in seed and early-stage startups in their personal capacity and claims to have already invested in over 70 startups. The platform has a ticket size of $100k-500k. 

Earlier in October, OYO’s top executives, which included Agarwal, had pooled in their separate angel investments into an LLP firm Raaga Partners to invest in early0stage startups. However, the funding did not have any connection with OYO but was rather only limited to the individuals separately.

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Source: https://timesnext.com/oyo-ritesh-agarwal-sets-aroa-ventures/