Ritesh Agarwal: OYO Founder's Life Story

Key facts
Born	16 November 1993, Bissam Cuttack, Rayagada district, Odisha [1][12]
Family roots	Marwari family; parents Ramesh and Bela Agarwal; youngest of four children [13][16]
Education	St. John’s Senior Secondary School, Kota; left a University of London programme in Delhi within days [1][19]
Family	Married Geetansha Sood in March 2023 [67]
Company	Founder and group CEO, PRISM (Oravel Stays Ltd), parent of OYO, Motel 6, Belvilla and other brands [6][88]
Wealth	Rs 14,440 crore, Hurun Global Rich List 2026 (March 2026) [9]; Outlook Money, citing the M3M Hurun India Rich List 2026, reported Rs 19,900 crore [11]
Known for	Building OYO from one Gurgaon hotel into a global stays company; India’s youngest billionaire; Shark Tank India judge

In 2013, a 19-year-old from small-town Odisha was cleaning rooms at a nondescript hotel in Gurgaon. He was its manager, its receptionist, its engineer and, when needed, its housekeeper. One family staying there asked him to babysit their child, and tipped him Rs 50 [14]. At night, he went back to his laptop and wrote code for an app [20].

The young man was Ritesh Agarwal. The hotel was the first one to carry the name OYO. Six years later, investors would value the company at US$10 billion [41]. A year after that, a pandemic would empty its rooms, and its founder would be carrying a personal debt of about US$2 billion taken to raise his stake [50].

This is the story of how a college dropout who first sold SIM cards became India’s youngest billionaire, how close he came to losing it all, and the many fights - with hotel owners, regulators, tax officers and a rival - that came with the climb.

Where it began

A Marwari boy in Rayagada

Ritesh Agarwal was born on 16 November 1993, according to the IPO papers his company filed with SEBI in 2026 [1]. His birthplace was Bissam Cuttack, a small town in the Rayagada district of southern Odisha [12] - a part of India better known then for Naxalite violence than for start-ups [14].

His parents, Ramesh and Bela Agarwal, were Odisha-based Marwaris [13]. Accounts of the family’s means differ. A 2012 accelerator press release said he came “from a family business background of Infrastructure” [4]. He himself has described a “middle-class” upbringing [15], and also said that his family was “well off” enough that, had he admitted to being broke, they would simply have told him to come home [19]. What every account agrees on is the commercial instinct of the household. He grew up, he said, hearing a Marwari saying: “top line is vanity, bottom line is sanity and cash flow is reality” [13].

He was the youngest of four children. Years later he joked about why he was never afraid of risk: “As long as 75 percent of the children for my parents were okay, I didn’t matter I thought” [16]. An elder sister, back from an entrepreneurship festival, was the first person he heard use the word “entrepreneur” [17]. He learned to code from his brother’s books [20]; the age he started varies by interview, from eight to thirteen [20][15][18].

The name of his company, he later said, came from a small childhood grievance. At relatives’ homes, the grown-ups wanted soap operas, and he wanted Cartoon Network. He never got the remote. “OYO” stands for “On Your Own” [14].

SIM cards, Kota and a book

By his own account and those of several profiles, he was earning money by 13, selling SIM cards [16][15]. In 2009 he moved to Kota in Rajasthan, the coaching capital of India, to prepare for the IIT entrance exam [16]. He finished school at St. John’s Senior Secondary School in Kota [1].

Kota did not hold him. His coaching institute was lax about attendance, so he spent weekends - and then much more - in Delhi, taking an overnight train to attend start-up events, sometimes sneaking into conferences he could not afford [16][17]. While in Kota, he wrote a book listing Indian engineering colleges, which sold well online [17][20].

Two days of college

In 2011 he moved to Delhi and enrolled in a University of London programme run at the Indian School of Business and Finance. He stayed two or three days - accounts differ - and never went back [21][19]. He told his parents it was a gap year [17].

They found out the truth from the newspapers. “My dad came to Delhi and was perplexed to see the office,” he recalled. His mother was unhappy for a more traditional reason: “she felt who would take me for a groom?” [14]

The first break

Oravel Stays: India’s would-be Airbnb

His first company was Oravel Stays, a website listing bed-and-breakfasts, private rooms and serviced apartments, mostly in the National Capital Region [4]. The legal entity, Oravel Stays Private Limited, was incorporated in New Delhi on 21 February 2012 [2] - the same company that, renamed and grown, files IPO papers today [1]. He has said he started with about Rs 16,000, made up of project stipends, his allowance and savings [18].

Before building, he went to see the product for himself. He stayed in more than 100 bed-and-breakfasts, guest houses and small hotels across India [5][16]. What he found was grim: “Sockets did not work in the room, mattresses were torn apart, the bathroom was leaking, and at the end they wouldn’t let me pay by card” [20].

In July 2012, Oravel joined the first batch of VentureNursery, an angel-backed accelerator set up by Shravan Shroff and Ravi Kiran [4]. In October 2012 it announced an undisclosed seed round from VentureNursery’s founders and eight angels [21].

There is a famous “what if” from this period. Gaming entrepreneur Vishal Gondal, who met him in 2011 when he was 17, later wrote that he had been offered 15% of the company for Rs 30 lakh and passed. “Truly my billion-dollar mistake,” Gondal said in 2019 [22].

The early months were hard. He has described having Rs 35 in the bank and sleeping on the stairs of his rented rooftop room [18]; another account puts his balance at Rs 23, with his phone cut off [19]. “There were some people who took me for a ride to achieve their short term goals,” he said in 2015 [20].

The Thiel Fellowship

In May 2013, at 19, he was named one of the winners of the Thiel Fellowship, run by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, which gives young people US$100,000 to skip or leave college and build something. He was the only winner from India that year [12]; OYO describes him as the first resident Asian accepted to the programme [5]. He put the money into the business [23] and has said Thiel taught him two things: “to be able to do innovative things” and “if you are thinking anyway, think big” [19].

The pivot that made OYO

Oravel’s problem, he concluded, was not finding rooms. “The real problem for the traveller was not lack of awareness, but lack of trust,” he told Forbes India [16]. Listing a room was not enough; a traveller needed to know that the sheets would be clean, the AC would work and the price would be fair.

So in 2013 he relaunched as OYO Rooms. Instead of just listing budget hotels, OYO would sign them up, standardise them - linen, toiletries, Wi-Fi - and sell the rooms under its own brand. The first hotel was in Gurgaon; accounts differ on whether it opened in May or June 2013 [20][102]. He worked there himself, doing every job from the front desk to the housekeeping [14][20].

The transition was not smooth. In early 2014, after two senior technology executives left, Oravel temporarily scaled down operations and limited phone bookings to Delhi-NCR [23]. But institutional money was arriving. Lightspeed and DSG Consumer Partners invested about Rs 4 crore in seed funding [24], Sequoia Capital came in during 2014 [25], and in March 2015 a Series A round led by Greenoaks Capital - reported at between US$20 million and US$25 million - valued OYO at about US$100 million. By then it had more than 200 hotels in 10 cities, up from 30 hotels six months earlier [25][26].

Building the empire

SoftBank arrives (2015-2017)

In August 2015, Japan’s SoftBank Group led a US$100 million Series B round in OYO, with Lightspeed, Sequoia and Greenoaks joining [27]. The company then had more than 1,000 hotels in over 70 cities [27]. Agarwal was 21.

The relationship with SoftBank’s founder, Masayoshi Son, would shape everything that followed. SoftBank led a further round of about US$90 million in August 2016, at a reported pre-money valuation of about US$400 million [28], and in September 2017 its new Vision Fund led a US$250 million round [29].

OYO’s model was simple to describe and hard to execute: take thousands of small, unbranded hotels, give them a facelift and a booking engine, and earn a share of revenue. To win hotel owners quickly, OYO often promised a minimum guaranteed income, which meant OYO took the risk if rooms went unsold. That bargain worked well in boom years and would become a source of bitter disputes later.

Going global (2017-2019)

From 2017, OYO expanded at a pace few Indian companies had attempted. It entered China in November 2017, and by November 2018 claimed more than 4,000 hotels and 180,000 rooms there [32]. In September 2018 it announced a US$1 billion round led by the Vision Fund, with about US$600 million earmarked for China; Bloomberg reported a valuation of about US$5 billion [31][30].

That round closed in early 2019 at about US$1.2 billion, with ride-hailing companies Didi Chuxing and Grab joining [33]. In April 2019, Airbnb confirmed an investment of US$150-200 million [34].

The acquisitions came quickly:

• @Leisure Group (May 2019): OYO agreed to buy the Amsterdam-based vacation-rental company from Axel Springer for about US$415 million, bringing brands such as Belvilla and DanCenter and tens of thousands of holiday homes across Europe [35].
• Innov8 (July 2019): a co-working start-up, bought for about US$30 million in stock, to anchor a new OYO Workspaces business [36].
• The US: OYO committed US$300 million to the American market and crossed 100 hotels there by September 2019 [37].
• Japan: an apartment-rental venture with Yahoo Japan, which Yahoo exited in December 2019 [44].

The US$2 billion bet on himself (2019)

In July 2019, Agarwal made the boldest personal move of his career. Through a Cayman Islands entity, RA Hospitality Holdings, he agreed to spend US$2 billion buying shares from early investors Lightspeed and Sequoia, and putting fresh capital into OYO [38]. The aim was to lift his stake from about 10% to about 30% [38][50].

He did not have US$2 billion. The money was borrowed from Japanese lenders led by Mizuho and Nomura [39], and Bloomberg reported that Masayoshi Son personally guaranteed the loans [50]. In October 2019, OYO announced a US$1.5 billion Series F round in which RA Hospitality put in US$700 million [40]. Bloomberg reported the round valued OYO at US$10 billion [41].

At 25, Agarwal now owned roughly a third of one of the most valuable start-ups in Asia. He had also tied his personal fortunes to that valuation holding up.

When the music stopped (2019-2021)

It did not hold. Even before COVID, the cracks were showing. In 2019, Reuters and Business Today reported a revolt among Indian hotel owners who said OYO’s fees and deductions had grown far beyond what they signed up for (see “Controversies” below) [42][43]. OYO lost US$335 million in FY19 on revenue of US$951 million [49]. In January 2020, it began cutting thousands of jobs in India and China [46]; by March, cuts had reached about 5,000 people globally [47].

Then the pandemic struck. By April 2020, revenue and occupancy were down 50-60%, OYO furloughed thousands of staff, and it ended guaranteed-revenue contracts with hotel partners. Agarwal gave up his entire salary for the rest of 2020; senior leaders took cuts of at least 25% [49]. China, which made up about 60% of OYO’s rooms, was hit first and hardest [48].

Bloomberg reported in April 2020 that Son’s US$2 billion guarantee was now at risk [50]. When OYO filed its first IPO papers in 2021, the numbers showed the damage: a loss of Rs 13,122.77 crore in FY20 and Rs 3,943.84 crore in FY21 [59].

The long road to profit (2021-2025)

In October 2021, OYO’s parent, Oravel Stays, filed a draft prospectus for an Rs 8,430 crore IPO - Rs 7,000 crore of fresh shares and Rs 1,430 crore sold by existing investors. SoftBank owned 46.62%; Agarwal, directly and through RA Hospitality, held 33.15% [59]. SEBI sent the papers back in early 2023 seeking more disclosures; OYO refiled, and withdrew again in May 2024 [85].

In between, the founder’s loan was quietly reworked. According to The Ken, a November 2022 restructuring wrote down about US$850 million of the quasi-equity part of the loan, and pushed a US$383 million loan component out to 2027 [65]. None of the parties commented.

The turnaround came from discipline rather than growth. In FY24, OYO reported its first-ever net profit of Rs 229 crore on revenue of Rs 5,388 crore [73]. “One big learning for me over the years is under-promise and over-deliver,” Agarwal wrote [73].

The price of survival was visible in the valuation. In August 2024, OYO raised Rs 1,457 crore at about Rs 29 a share, valuing it at about US$2.4 billion - roughly 75% below its 2019 peak. The biggest cheque, Rs 830 crore, came from Patient Capital, a Singapore fund linked to Agarwal; Mankind Pharma’s promoters and investors via InCred also joined [74]. In January 2025, Redsprig Innovation Partners, a firm headed by Agarwal, put in another Rs 550 crore [77]. The founder was buying back in at the bottom.

Motel 6 and a new name (2024-2026)

In September 2024, OYO announced its biggest deal yet: the US$525 million all-cash purchase of G6 Hospitality, owner of the Motel 6 and Studio 6 brands, from Blackstone Real Estate. The deal, completed in December 2024, added nearly 1,500 franchised locations in the US and Canada [3]. It also bought Checkmyguest, a Paris-based short-stay manager, for about Rs 230 crore [75]. By December 2024, a secondary share sale to Nuvama valued OYO at about US$4.6 billion [76].

The FY25 numbers came with a lesson in reading headlines. In May 2025, Agarwal announced unaudited net profit of Rs 623 crore [84]. The audited annual report, released in September 2025, showed consolidated net profit of Rs 244.8 crore, helped by a deferred-tax gain, on revenue of about Rs 6,253 crore [87].

In that same annual report, the parent company took a new name: PRISM. OYO remained the consumer brand for budget hotels, sitting alongside Motel 6, Belvilla, Checkmyguest and premium brands such as Palette, Clubhouse and Sunday [88][87]. “Prism will serve as the umbrella for all our diverse businesses,” Agarwal told shareholders [88].

Third time at the IPO gate (2025-2026)

The third IPO attempt was shaped by the founder’s loan. In March 2025, Bloomberg reported that lenders wanted the US$383 million portion repaid unless OYO listed; Agarwal’s family office called the reports “completely incorrect” [79]. In May 2025, Reuters and Bloomberg reported that SoftBank had pushed back against an October 2025 listing, and the IPO slipped to 2026 [83]. No report found for this profile confirms how the founder loan stands today.

PRISM filed confidentially in late 2025 and published an updated draft prospectus on 30 June 2026 [91]. Its main features [91][92]:

• An Rs 6,650 crore issue made up entirely of new shares - neither Agarwal nor SoftBank is selling.
• About Rs 4,987.5 crore to repay borrowings, largely debt taken for the Motel 6 purchase.
• SoftBank’s Vision Fund entity owns 40.04%; Agarwal owns 6.59% directly and 20.12% through RA Hospitality, a total of 26.71%.
• More than 24,000 hotels and 124,000 homes across 35-plus countries, with the US now the largest market by gross booking value.

For FY26, PRISM reported net profit of Rs 994.18 crore on revenue of Rs 9,357.98 crore, up nearly 50%; the profit included a deferred-tax credit of about Rs 678 crore [96]. On 9 September 2026, Agarwal said: “Hopefully, we will launch the IPO in the current financial year itself” [97]. As of 20 October 2026, PRISM is not listed. (For background on how IPOs and draft prospectuses work, see CapitalVia Insights.)

How the wealth is held

Almost all of Agarwal’s fortune is his 26.71% stake in PRISM, an unlisted company [1][91]. Most of it sits in RA Hospitality Holdings (Cayman), the vehicle used for the 2019 buyback, whose shares were pledged to the lenders at the time [39]. Rich-list figures for him have swung with OYO’s fortunes: Rs 2,600 crore on the 2018 Hurun India list, when he was its youngest entrepreneur [98]; US$1.1 billion in Hurun’s 2020 global list, which named him one of the world’s youngest self-made billionaires [99]; Rs 14,400 crore on the M3M Hurun India Rich List 2025 [10]; and Rs 14,440 crore on the Hurun Global Rich List 2026, which called him India’s youngest billionaire at 32 [9]. Outlook Money, citing the M3M Hurun India Rich List 2026, put him at Rs 19,900 crore in September 2026 [11].

Shark Tank and a public face

In September 2023, Agarwal was announced as the youngest “shark” for Season 3 of Shark Tank India, which aired in 2024 [70]; he has continued on the show since. The show gave him a far wider, warmer public image than the business press ever had. He used it to talk about his own gaps: “When I started OYO, I had no clue how to read or interpret a balance sheet,” he posted in 2024 [71].

In March 2023, he married Geetansha Sood. Masayoshi Son flew in for the reception in Delhi, where guests also included Sunil Bharti Mittal [67]. Three days later, on 10 March, his father Ramesh Agarwal died after a fall from the family’s high-rise apartment in Gurugram; police said a preliminary inquiry pointed to an accident [68][69]. Agarwal called his father “our guiding light and strength” and asked for privacy [69]. “I think the last two or three years have left a lasting effect in me,” he said in 2024 [72].

The setbacks and failures

Agarwal’s story is often told as a straight line from dropout to billionaire. It was not.

• Oravel nearly failed. In 2014 the company scaled back after losing its senior tech staff [23], and its founder was down to his last few rupees [18].
• China did not work. OYO spent heavily to become one of China’s largest hotel networks, then cut back sharply when growth stalled and COVID arrived [32][48].
• Japan was written off. Yahoo Japan’s parent wrote off its stake in the OYO Life apartments venture and sold it back for a token sum [48][44].
• The valuation collapsed. From a reported US$10 billion in 2019 [41], OYO raised money at about US$2.4 billion in 2024 [74].
• Two IPO attempts were abandoned, in 2023 and 2024 [85].
• Mass layoffs. OYO cut thousands of jobs in 2020 and about 600 more technology roles in December 2022 [47][66].

He has been frank about the mistakes. “It is clear that we could have done things better, we acknowledge them and improve,” he said in 2020. “If you think that scale doesn’t bring newer challenges every time, you haven’t seen the company grow” [54].

Controversies and allegations

OYO’s rapid growth produced an unusually long list of disputes. Most are commercial fights with hotel owners; one is a finding by India’s competition regulator. As of the date of this profile, no court or regulator has found Ritesh Agarwal personally guilty of any offence, and no charge-sheet against him has been reported.

Hotel owners’ complaints and the 2019-2020 investigations

Allegation: In October 2019, Reuters interviewed 22 hotel owners in 10 cities who said OYO’s 20% commission had grown to half of revenue or more through new “platform” and “visibility” fees, that payments were withheld, and that hotels which left OYO were still shown as “sold out” on its app. A Bengaluru hotel association called for a criminal probe [42]. Business Today reported that thousands of hotels had left the platform [43]. In January 2020, The New York Times published an investigation alleging listings of unavailable or unlicensed hotels, free rooms for police and officials, hidden fees and a “toxic” work culture [45].

Response: OYO said it had “always disclosed any changes applicable to contracts” and Agarwal said complainants were a small fraction of its partners [42]. After the NYT report, OYO said it was “committed to growing OYO the right way”, pointed to escalation systems for disputed payments, and Agarwal told staff the company would examine each allegation [46].

Status: These were allegations in journalism and complaints by hotel owners. They led to several police complaints and a competition case, described below; none of the newspaper allegations was itself the subject of a court finding.

Police complaints by hotel owners (2019, 2020, 2025)

Allegation: Several hotel owners filed criminal complaints naming Agarwal and other executives. In September 2019, a Bengaluru hotel owner alleged under cheating and breach-of-trust sections that OYO had taken far more than the agreed share of revenue [100]. In November 2019, another Bengaluru owner alleged about Rs 35 lakh in unpaid guaranteed revenue and fake “no-show” bookings [101]. In 2020, a Chandigarh businessman filed a complaint in Punjab over a terminated contract [56].

Response: OYO called the cases commercial disputes and the allegations “incorrect and defamatory”, “sensationalised” or “baseless” [100][101][56].

What happened next:

• Reuters reported that the Karnataka High Court stayed the investigation in the first Bengaluru case [42].
• In 2020, the Punjab and Haryana High Court stayed the Punjab FIR, taking the view that the dispute appeared to be civil [56].
• In April 2025, a Jaipur resort owner filed an FIR alleging that OYO recorded about Rs 22 crore of bookings that never happened, leading to a GST demand of about Rs 2.66 crore against the resort [80]. OYO said the dispute was the hotelier’s own GST matter, that the FIR was against an unknown person, and sued the complainant for defamation [80][81]. The Rajasthan High Court granted OYO interim protection from coercive action [82].

Status: No conviction or charge-sheet against Agarwal has been reported in any of these cases. Several have been stayed; the final outcome of the others has not been reported.

The Competition Commission penalty (2022)

Allegation: The Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Associations of India (FHRAI) complained to the Competition Commission of India (CCI) in 2019. In October 2022, the CCI found that confidential arrangements between MakeMyTrip-Goibibo and OYO, which gave OYO preferential treatment on the travel platforms, were anti-competitive. It fined MakeMyTrip-Goibibo Rs 223.48 crore and OYO Rs 168.88 crore [7][62].

Response: OYO appealed. It argues the arrangement did not shut out rivals and that the penalty was wrongly calculated [93].

What happened next:

• In November 2022, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) admitted OYO’s appeal on the condition that it deposit 10% of the penalty [63].
• FHRAI wrote to SEBI in 2021 and again in November 2022 asking it to stop OYO’s IPO; OYO called the letters “manufactured and baseless” and said FHRAI misrepresented the order [60][64].

Status: The CCI finding stands, subject to OYO’s appeal, which was still pending in 2026 [93].

The insolvency petition (2021)

Allegation: In 2021 a Gurgaon hotel owner said OYO’s subsidiary OYO Hotels and Homes owed him about Rs 16 lakh. The NCLT in Ahmedabad admitted his insolvency petition against the subsidiary [57].

Response: Agarwal said the company paid “under protest” and appealed [57].

Status: Closed. In July 2021, the NCLAT allowed the petition to be withdrawn after the creditor confirmed full payment [58].

The Zostel dispute

Allegation: In November 2015, OYO and Zostel signed a term sheet for OYO to acquire Zostel’s budget-hotel business, Zo Rooms, in exchange for about 7% of OYO. OYO said the term sheet was non-binding and lapsed; Zostel said it was a binding deal [89]. In March 2021, an arbitral tribunal held that the term sheet had become binding through the parties’ conduct [89].

Response: OYO challenged the award and has called Zostel’s later applications frivolous [94].

What happened next:

• In February 2022, the Delhi High Court refused Zostel’s plea to stop OYO’s IPO, saying its claim had not crystallised [61].
• In May 2025, the Delhi High Court set aside the arbitral award, finding there was no agreement on essential terms [8].
• Zostel has appealed. In 2026 it filed and then withdrew pleas aimed at PRISM’s IPO disclosures, saying its rights remained “fully reserved” [94][95].

Status: Zostel’s appeal is pending. PRISM’s IPO papers disclose that, in a worst case, it could have to transfer up to 7% of its shares or pay the cash equivalent [93].

Tax demands

Allegation: Income-tax authorities raised large “angel tax”-type demands related to shares issued within the group. One assessment for 2021-22 led to a demand of about Rs 1,140 crore [86]; another involved an addition of about Rs 3,885 crore [90]. Reports do not make clear whether these overlap.

Response: OYO called one assessment “unreasonably high pitched and excessive” [86].

Status: The Delhi High Court stayed recovery of the Rs 1,140 crore demand in July 2025 [86], and in June 2026 the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal ordered the Rs 3,885 crore addition deleted [90]. The tax department can appeal.

The founder’s loan and SoftBank

Allegation: No wrongdoing is alleged here, but the 2019 buyback has drawn scrutiny. Reports by Bloomberg and The Ken said Agarwal’s roughly US$2 billion loan was guaranteed by Masayoshi Son, was restructured in 2022, and that repayment pressure shaped the timing of the IPO [50][65][79].

Response: Agarwal’s family office called the March 2025 reports “completely incorrect”; SoftBank also disputed them [79].

Status: This is a private financing matter, not a legal case. No lawsuit between Agarwal and SoftBank has been reported.

Other matters

• US franchisees (2020): A proposed class action in Texas by franchisees alleged that OYO used COVID-19 as a pretext to stop paying minimum-revenue guarantees; OYO called it “baseless” and counter-claimed [55]. Its outcome has not been reported in the sources reviewed.
• Inherited Motel 6 lawsuits: PRISM’s IPO papers disclose lawsuits in the US, inherited with G6 Hospitality, that allege human trafficking at franchised motels. In one case PRISM says it did not operate the motel, and the franchisee has accepted indemnity [93].
• Check-in policy (2025): In January 2025 OYO let partner hotels in Meerut refuse unmarried couples, citing local feedback. The policy drew criticism but no legal action [78].

As of 20 October 2026, no court or regulator has made a finding against Ritesh Agarwal personally. The CCI order against OYO is under appeal, and the Zostel and tax cases are pending.

Giving back

Agarwal has no publicly known personal foundation and has made no public giving pledge. His most documented giving came during the pandemic. In April 2020, OYO and its leadership gave Rs 2.5 crore to the PM CARES Fund, the company committed about US$3.5 million to COVID relief globally, and it set up an OYO Welfare Fund, funded by owners and employees, for hotel staff and partners [51][52]. “It is our responsibility to come together and give back the love and support we have always received,” he said [52].

His other form of giving back has been to young founders. Through Shark Tank India he has invested in a string of small businesses.

Succession

At 32, succession is not a live question for Agarwal. The more relevant question is control. Agarwal is both chairman and group CEO of PRISM [6], but owns about 26.71% against SoftBank’s 40.04% [91]. After the IPO, as a fresh issue dilutes all shareholders, the company’s direction will depend on its board, its public investors and his relationship with SoftBank as much as on his own stake.

What their journey teaches

Solve the problem you can see, not the one you assumed. Oravel listed rooms; OYO fixed trust. Agarwal found that by sleeping in more than 100 budget lodgings, not by studying a pitch deck [16].

Do the unglamorous work yourself. He was the receptionist, housekeeper and coder at the first OYO hotel [14][20]. Founders who have done every job understand where the business really breaks.

Borrowing to bet on yourself magnifies everything. The 2019 loan made him a billionaire on paper and then left him exposed when the valuation fell [50][65]. Leverage that depends on a single valuation holding up is a risk, however confident the founder.

Growth bought with guarantees has a bill. Minimum-revenue promises won hotel partners fast, but when they were changed or ended, they turned into complaints, police cases and lawsuits [42][49].

Read the audited number. The gap between OYO’s announced FY25 profit of Rs 623 crore and its audited Rs 244.8 crore is a reminder for every investor and employee to check what the annual report actually says [84][87].

Survival is a strategy. From a US$10 billion peak to a US$2.4 billion round, OYO survived by cutting hard and then buying assets cheaply. “Every overnight success is a five to 10-year-old story,” he has said [53].

A profile for general reading, based on public records and reporting as of 20 October 2026. Not investment, tax or legal advice.

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24. Oravel.com gets funding from DSG Consumer Partners and Lightspeed - IndianWeb2, May 2014
25. OYO Rooms raises funding led by Greenoaks - Inc42, Mar 2015
26. OYO Rooms raises Series A from Lightspeed, Sequoia, Greenoaks - YourStory, Mar 2015
27. OYO Rooms raises $100 million from SoftBank and existing investors - MediaNama, Aug 2015
28. Oyo closes $90 million funding round with SoftBank leading - Business Insider India, Aug 2016
29. OYO gets $250 Mn funding from SoftBank, Hero Enterprise, others - Inc42, Sep 2017
30. How 24-year-old Ritesh Agarwal built Oyo into a $5 billion startup (Bloomberg) - Mint, Sep 2018
31. 24-year-old Oyo founder raises $1 billion to fund overseas push - Bloomberg, Sep 2018
32. Oyo Hotels showing dramatic growth in China - Hotel Management, Nov 2018
33. Oyo's $1 billion Series E: Didi, Grab join - SmartCompany, Feb 2019
34. Airbnb confirms US$150 million to US$200 million investment in India's OYO - The Logic, Apr 2019
35. OYO to acquire Amsterdam-based Leisure Group for $415 million - Business Today, May 2019
36. Oyo acquires co-working startup Innov8 for US$30 million - TTG Asia, Jul 2019
37. OYO passes 100 properties in the US - Business Traveller, Sep 2019
38. 25-year-old founder will spend $2 billion to raise stake in Oyo (Bloomberg) - BNN Bloomberg, Jul 2019
39. Mizuho, Nomura to finance OYO founder Ritesh Agarwal's $2b buyback - DealStreetAsia, Jul 2019
40. Oyo to raise $1.5B Series F; Ritesh Agarwal to infuse $700M through RA Hospitality - YourStory, Oct 2019
41. India startup Oyo raises $1.5 billion at $10 billion valuation - Bloomberg, Oct 2019
42. Heartbreak hotel: Is SoftBank's Oyo hurting Indian hoteliers? (Reuters) - Al Jazeera, Oct 2019
43. As SoftBank's OYO booms, over 10,000 hotels cry foul and check out - Business Today, Oct 2019
44. SoftBank's Yahoo Japan exits Oyo's Japan apartment venture (Bloomberg) - IOL, Dec 2019
45. NYT report on OYO's 'toxic' culture and troubling incidents - Law Street Media, Jan 2020
46. 'Change can be hard': OYO CEO confirms layoffs - CNN, Jan 2020
47. SoftBank-backed Indian startup Oyo to cut 5,000 jobs globally - TechCrunch, Mar 2020
48. Oyo's post-coronavirus valuation could fall to around $6 billion - Skift, Mar 2020
49. India's Oyo furloughs thousands of employees as revenue drops by over 50% - TechCrunch, Apr 2020
50. Son's $2b guarantee at risk as virus hits SoftBank Indian star (Bloomberg) - The Jakarta Post, Apr 2020
51. OYO contributes to PM CARES Fund, sets up welfare fund - Inc42, Apr 2020
52. OYO Hotels forms COVID-19 fund; founder waives his salary - Asian Hospitality, Apr 2020
53. Ritesh Agarwal on resilience, OYO and the pandemic - YourStory, May 2020
54. Ritesh Agarwal's Ask-Me-Anything on OYO - Inc42, Jun 2020
55. Franchisees say hotel co. used COVID-19 to skip payments - Law360, Oct 2020
56. Punjab and Haryana HC stays FIR against OYO founder - Inc42, Oct 2020
57. NCLT admits insolvency plea against OYO subsidiary - MediaNama, Apr 2021
58. Insolvency case against OYO ends in settlement - BloombergQuint, Jul 2021
59. OYO files for IPO: Six things to know - The News Minute, Oct 2021
60. FHRAI writes to SEBI seeking suspension of OYO's IPO - Inc42, Oct 2021
61. Delhi High Court dismisses Zostel's plea against OYO - Outlook Business, Feb 2022
62. CCI imposes Rs 392.36 crore fine on MakeMyTrip, Goibibo, OYO - Business Today, Oct 2022
63. NCLAT stays CCI's INR 169 Cr penalty on OYO - Inc42, Nov 2022
64. FHRAI writes to Sebi to stop OYO from launching IPO after CCI penalty - Business Standard, Nov 2022
65. Ritesh Agarwal and the missing 850 million dollars - The Ken, Nov 2022
66. IPO-bound OYO to sack 600 employees as part of restructuring - Business Today, Dec 2022
67. Masayoshi Son, Sunil Mittal attend OYO founder Ritesh Agarwal's wedding reception - Business Today, Mar 2023
68. OYO founder Ritesh Agarwal's father dies after falling from Gurugram building - Business Today, Mar 2023
69. OYO founder Ritesh Agarwal issues statement on father's death - The News Minute, Mar 2023
70. Ritesh Agarwal joins Shark Tank India Season 3 - Inc42, Sep 2023
71. 'I had no clue how to read a balance sheet': Ritesh Agarwal - Storyboard18, Feb 2024
72. OYO CEO discusses personal highs and lows, Shark Tank's impact - Skift, Mar 2024
73. OYO reports first-ever net profit of Rs 229 crore in FY24 - Outlook Business, Aug 2024
74. Oyo's valuation reduces by around 75% after Rs 1,457 crore funding round - Outlook Business, Aug 2024
75. OYO snaps up Paris-based Checkmyguest for $27.4 Mn - Inc42, Aug 2024
76. Nuvama Wealth buys OYO shares worth INR 100 Cr at $4.6 Bn valuation - Inc42, Dec 2024
77. OYO raises INR 550 Cr from Ritesh Agarwal-led Redsprig Innovation - Inc42, Jan 2025
78. OYO says no to unmarried couples with new check-in rules - The Week, Jan 2025
79. Oyo speeds up IPO plans as Ritesh Agarwal's debt repayment date looms - Business Standard, Mar 2025
80. Jaipur resort files FIR against OYO for alleged GST fraud over fake bookings - Outlook Business, Apr 2025
81. OYO moves Delhi High Court to restrain media from reporting on FIR - Bar & Bench, Apr 2025
82. Rajasthan HC grants OYO interim protection in Jaipur FIR - Inc42, Apr 2025
83. Oyo delays IPO to 2026 after SoftBank pushback, targets $7 bn valuation - Business Standard, May 2025
84. OYO becomes most profitable Indian startup in FY25 with Rs 623 crore profit - Outlook Business, May 2025
85. Why OYO's IPO dreams keep slipping - Outlook Business, May 2025
86. Delhi HC stays INR 1,140 Cr angel tax demand against OYO - Inc42, Jul 2025
87. OYO FY25 revenue, profit and rebrand - MediaNama, Sep 2025
88. OYO changes corporate entity name to PRISM - YourStory, Sep 2025
89. From acquisition to accusations: What's behind OYO-Zostel's decade-long feud - Outlook Business, 2025
90. IPO-bound PRISM gets relief in Rs 3,885 Cr angel tax demand case - Inc42, Jun 2026
91. OYO parent Prism files updated IPO papers: No share sale by Ritesh Agarwal or SoftBank - The Week, Jun 2026
92. OYO parent PRISM files updated papers for Rs 6,650 crore IPO - YourStory, Jun 2026
93. A look at PRISM's legal battles - Inc42, Jul 2026
94. Delhi HC disposes Zostel plea in PRISM-OYO dispute - Asian Hospitality, Jul 2026
95. Zostel withdraws Delhi HC plea seeking SEBI review of OYO's IPO disclosures - Inc42, Aug 2026
96. OYO's parent firm Prism reports net profit of Rs 994 crore for FY26 - YourStory, Aug 2026
97. OYO parent PRISM aiming for IPO launch in current fiscal - Outlook Business, Sep 2026
98. At 24, OYO founder Ritesh Agarwal becomes youngest entrepreneur on Hurun India Rich List - Business Today, Sep 2018
99. OYO's Ritesh Agarwal shares this title with Kylie Jenner - Business Today, Feb 2020
100. Cheating case filed against OYO founder in Bengaluru - Inc42, Sep 2019
101. Cheating case filed against OYO founder Ritesh Agarwal and 6 others - Business Today, Nov 2019
102. Ritesh Agarwal - Wikipedia, accessed Oct 2026