Moneycontrol Startup Conclave: India can build many billion

Moneycontrol Startup Conclave: India can build many billion-dollar revenue firms, say Oyo, Kuku founders

India is poised to build some of the biggest new age businesses and consumer brands for the world. The country will even easily lead the AI-generated content space, Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal and Kuku co-founder Vinod Kumar Meena weighed in at the Moneycontrol Startup Conclave in Bengaluru.

Both Agarwal and Meena hail from small towns of India, Rayagada in Southern Odisha and Rajgarh in Rajasthan respectively, yet making it big with their businesses at a global scale.

Speaking at the Conclave, Agarwal, founder and CEO of PRISM, that runs Oyo, said, “. The same way there are large successful American consumer brands, which went global, as Indians we have the same opportunity to do it. We have the world’s largest English speakers, we have the same technology platforms as the world uses. Instead of seeing this as a weakness, we must harness it and use to distribute our services around the world.”

Agarwal highlighted that PRISM has grown to build a larger chain of hotels, seeing majority of its growth coming from the global markets. In the US, the company operates 2,300 hotels, of which 1,400 came through acquisitions. In Europe, PRISM manages 100,000 summer houses. The company more Sunday hotels (4-star properties) in Germany than in India. And a have significant scale in the South East and Middle East, he said.

“You will see 50-100 $1 billion revenue consumer companies from India for the world,” Agarwal said, who is also an investor on Shark Tank India.

On the business front, Oyo has already made several attempts of going public, with its business getting massively hit during Covid years. Between FY21 to FY26, the company went from decline of Rs 500 crores in Ebitda to earning Rs 2,600 crores Ebitda in the previous fiscal.

For Kuku, the journey to venture into micro dramas have been a game changer. The eight-year-old startup is eyeing to produce 1200 to 1300 AI-generated shows by the end of December.

“When we used to produce content shooting with real actors through AI-assisted production, we created 200 shows a month. Here AI did the heavy lifting before the production. Now with fully AI systems, we have reached 500 shows a month and by December, we will be reaching 1200 to 1300 shows a month,” said Vinod Kumar Meena, Co-founder, Kuku said.

He added that ultimately for micro dramas, the kind of mainstream content that gets customers to join Kuku is very different from the content that retains them.

To this, Agarwal who was on the same panel with Meena, said Oyo has been actively marketing its stays and offering within micro dramas as viewers look for aspirational lifestyles and travel opportunities on these shows.

Meena said, “China has already reached 100,000 content hours produced a year. We as a country have to definitely beat that to have a global presence…Today, I feel we are underestimating the power of AI on content…India will win the content race, and become the place which will supply content to the world.”

Speaking of his roots from a small town in Odisha, Agarwal noted that there are some common traits of entrepreneurs coming from a smaller town or a village versus an urban city.

“The first is entrepreneurs coming from small towns are relatively easier to work with,” Agarwal said,

“They have lot of gratitude both for the opportunity, self and people they are working with. And there’s extraordinary amount of grit. There’s no giving up. Nothing that can break someone who’s had conversations in and around home of how the month’s expenses get solved for,” he added.

“Once you hear that you don’t get bothered about Covid or having just six months of cash runway, knowing you survived worst.”

“As founders, we don’t really care about IPO or funding, our concern surrounds how’s the business and day to day cashflow doing. That rigour to not focus on the glittery things seen in the media and focusing on day to day business -- that rigour comes from seeing those hardships while growing up. Those differences are quite big,” said Meena.

Discover the latest Business News, Sensex, and Nifty updates. Obtain Personal Finance insights, tax queries, and expert opinions on Moneycontrol or download the Moneycontrol App to stay updated!

Find the best of Al News in one place, specially curated for you every weekend.

Stay on top of the latest tech trends and biggest startup news.