India's youngest self-made billionaire is looking for a room on D-Street
A teenager once pitched ₹30 lakh for a slice of his startup and mostly got no for an answer. That same idea now heads toward the public markets as a global hospitality business, built through coding experiments, budget stays, early failures, and a...
At 17, Ritesh Agarwal was offering investors a 15% stake in his fledgling startup for just ₹30 lakh.
Most said no.
Today, the college dropout is preparing to take OYO-parent PRISM to the stock market through a ₹6,650-crore initial public offering (IPO), capping one of Indian startup history's most dramatic journeys -- from an Odisha village to building a hospitality empire spread across more than 35 countries.
The boy who learnt coding before he became a founder
Born in Bissamcuttack, a village in Odisha's Rayagada district, Agarwal’s early years already showed a quiet pull towards building things, even if he didn’t have language for it yet.
He has often described how that environment shaped his thinking in ways traditional success stories don’t always capture.
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“I did not grow up around entrepreneurs. I grew up around problems, and that turns out to be the better education, because it teaches you to build for people rather than for applause,” Agarwal said, speaking exclusively to ET Online.
That early mindset translated into action very quickly. He began coding at the age of eight, spending long hours on computers, experimenting, breaking things, and slowly figuring out how software actually works.
While most teenagers were still thinking through academic choices, he was already drawn towards technology and building something of his own.
Exposure kept building over time. At 16, he was selected for the Asian Science Camp at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai, an annual gathering designed to nurture young scientific talent.
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Failure, though, came just as early and just as visibly. Years later, he would reflect on that period in a way that reframes it entirely.
“I failed early, and I failed in full view of everyone, and I have come to believe that failure which arrives young is not a wound, it is a vaccine. It immunises you against the fear that stops most people from ever starting,” said Agarwal, who has since gone on to become India’s youngest billionaire, with an estimated net worth of ₹18,402 crore (about US $2 billion), according to Hurun’s March rich list.
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By 17, he had already taken on the role of chief executive officer at a company called Worth Growth Partners, a brief stint that ended in difficulty, but left behind sharper lessons about how fragile early ventures can be.
The teenager who kept sneaking into startup events
Long before OYO existed, Agarwal spent much of his time travelling across cities to attend entrepreneurship conferences and networking events.
He often stayed in budget accommodations and bed-and-breakfast properties, experiences that exposed him to the fragmented and inconsistent nature of India's hospitality sector.
Money was scarce. Registration fees for startup events were often beyond his means, so he sometimes found other ways to get inside.
“What I understood in those years, staying in rooms that had clearly given up on the people sleeping in them, was that comfort is not a luxury. It is a quiet form of dignity,” Agarwal told ET Online.
That idea eventually connected to a deeper philosophy about what hospitality really meant.
“We were never really in the business of selling rooms. We were in the business of making a stranger feel expected.”
Those early years, uneven and formative, gradually shaped how he thought about risk, comfort, and what it means to build something for people rather than just build something at all.
And those trips eventually gave birth to his first startup idea.
Oravel: India's Airbnb that wasn't
In 2012, at the age of 18, Agarwal founded Oravel, a platform modelled on Airbnb that aimed to help travellers discover and book affordable accommodations.
The startup secured its first funding of ₹30 lakh from startup accelerator VentureNursery.
But the Airbnb model did not quite click in India.
Agarwal quickly realised that India's opportunity lay elsewhere and not in helping people rent spare rooms but in fixing the quality of budget hotels.
So he pivoted.
The Airbnb clone was scrapped and OYO Stays was born.
The idea was simple but ambitious: Standardised budget hotels, offering travellers a predictable experience.
Little did anyone see that this venture would change the course of the company. And Agarwal's life.
The fellowship that changed everything
At 19, Agarwal became the only Indian selected for the prestigious Thiel Fellowship, founded by billionaire investor Peter Thiel.
The programme offers young entrepreneurs under 20 a grant of $100,000 over two years, along with mentorship from some of Silicon Valley's biggest names.
Agarwal has often spoken about learning from entrepreneurs such as Thiel, Elon Musk and Sean Parker during that period.
The fellowship gave him not just funding but credibility.
Investors began paying attention.
The investor who regrets saying no
One of those investors was entrepreneur Vishal Gondal.
In a Mint column, Gondal recalled meeting a teenage Agarwal, who offered him a 15% stake in Oravel for ₹30 lakh.
"It was very interesting to meet this young boy with such bold ambitions. I wasn't sure I wanted to invest in Oravel. I had my doubts on whether Indians would want to live in strangers' homes, and the numbers he projected looked crazy big."
He decided to pass.
Years later, he admitted it was one of his biggest missed opportunities.
"Unfortunately, I completely missed the opportunity and, if I had a time machine, the only thing I would want to do is to go back in time and undo my decision."
Agarwal later responded graciously, calling Gondal "the original start-up hero" and saying he had learned a lot from him.
Those early exchanges weren’t just about funding anymore. They slowly shaped how Agarwal thought about risk, belief, and what it means to build for people rather than just build something. Over time, that thinking began to settle into something more structured -- almost like a philosophy.
Where ideas started getting ideas
Over time, he started putting that belief into words.
“People assume ambition is something you import from big cities. I think it is the opposite,” he said.
For him, ambition wasn’t tied to geography or access. It came from where you start, and what you decide not to accept as fixed.
“The size of the place you come from has nothing to do with the size of the thing you are allowed to build.”
That idea stayed closely linked to the problem he was trying to solve in hospitality -- something simple on the surface, but inconsistent in reality.
“Everything we have built rests on one stubborn idea: that a good, honest place to stay should not depend on how much you can pay.”
It also came from observing how uneven travel could feel, especially for people far from home, where small details often shaped the entire experience.
“And that someone from a town most people cannot find on a map has every right to build that for the world.”
By now, it wasn’t just about starting a company. It had shifted into something more personal -- a need to prove a different kind of point.
“I have never been interested in being the largest. I am interested in being the proof.”
And that proof wasn’t about scale alone. It was about what becomes possible when early limits stop defining the end result.
“Proof that you can begin with nothing, in the middle of nowhere, and still end up responsible for how people feel, all over the world, when they are far from home.”
The company that outgrew India
And in one of the biggest twists in OYO's story, the company that once became synonymous with India's budget hotels now earns most of its money abroad.
If someone had told investors a decade ago that OYO would one day become more American than Indian, few would have believed it.
But that's exactly what has happened.
According to PRISM's updated draft red herring prospectus (UDRHP), India now accounts for less than 12% of the company's revenues, down sharply from nearly 30% just a few years ago.
The company now derives around 84% of its revenue from operations outside India.
Its largest market?
The United States.
How America became OYO's biggest business
The turning point came in 2024, when OYO acquired G6 Hospitality, the parent company of Motel 6 and Studio 6.
The acquisition instantly made North America the company's biggest market.
During the first nine months of FY26, OYO's US business generated gross booking value (GBV) of ₹12,022.5 crore, accounting for 52.4% of the company's global GBV.
The US alone contributed around 27% of the company's overall revenue during the period.
For a company that once built its business by signing up hotels in Gurugram and Noida, it was a remarkable geographical pivot.
Europe's quiet contribution
OYO's overseas transformation did not happen in America alone.
Its 2019 acquisition of Amsterdam-headquartered Leisure Group significantly expanded its presence in Europe's vacation homes market.
The company now operates through brands such as:
Belvilla
DanCenter
CheckMyGuest
Europe contributed roughly 24% of PRISM's revenue from operations during the first nine months of FY26.
The company has also been expanding its footprint in the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
The long road to Dalal Street
Few startup stories have had as many twists as OYO's.
A teenager from a small village who taught himself coding.
A founder who once slept outside his apartment because he could not pay rent.
An entrepreneur who offered away a large chunk of his company for ₹30 lakh.
And a hotel startup that went global so aggressively that India is now one of its smaller markets.
The company that taught millions of Indians to book budget hotel rooms now finds its biggest customers, and its biggest opportunities, far beyond India's borders.
And now, as it edges toward the public markets, the story doesn’t really end so much as get priced, packaged, and put in front of everyone who once decided it was too early to back.
