Founder of SoftBank-backed global hotel brand OYO, Ritesh Agarwal has floated a new entity – Aroa Ventures – in Singapore to make his investment in early-stage startups. Aroa Ventures is sponsored by RACo Holding Company and Agarwal controls 100% stake in the investment firm.
Aroa Ventures has been looking to place bets across growth-stage businesses in the consumer, technology, and leisure infrastructure sectors. According to its website, it prefers companies with proven unit economics and high potential to scale, a year-on-year growth rate of 20%, and USD 1 million to USD 10 million in annual revenue.
“We are partial to businesses that have the ability to create disproportionate value through adjacencies. We invest between USD 500K and USD 5 million,” as per information provided by Aroa Ventures on its website. Beyond capital, the firm helps portfolio companies accelerate their growth and deliver better risk-adjusted returns.
According to filings in Singapore, the company was registered last year with Agarwal and Thomas Hufnagel as the two shareholders in the company. Later in November last year, Agarwal took over complete ownership of RA Holdings Pte, and Hufnagel who is a partner at the law firm who handled the registration transferred his holdings to the former.
Unlike founders of other large-scale companies, Agarwal hasn’t been in the news for making personal investments. Entrackr couldn’t verify independently whether he invested in any startup in an individual capacity or not.
Aroa Ventures is the third venture registered by Agarwal. Previously, he had registered RA Hospitality Holdings (Cayman) that used to buy $1.5 billion worth stake in OYO from its early backers – Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Ventures. RACo Holding Company is another company by Agarwal that controls Aroa Ventures completely.
Read original article
