In 2011, an 18-year-old kid from a small town in Odisha, India, dropped out of college, bought a one-way train ticket to Delhi with ₹9,000 ($150) in his pocket, and started sleeping in the cheapest hotels he could find, sometimes ₹200 ($3) a night.
He had no investors.
No degree.
No tech background.
Just a notebook and a crazy idea: India’s millions of tiny, unbranded budget hotels were terrible… but fixable.
Twelve years later, that kid, Ritesh Agarwal, is the world’s second-youngest self-made billionaire (after Kylie Jenner). His company, OYO Rooms (now just OYO), is valued at $10 billion, operates 1.2 million rooms across 80 countries, and books more hotel nights than Hilton worldwide.
He did it all before turning 32.
This is the raw, unfiltered story of how a non-technical teenager from a middle-class family in rural India built one of the largest hospitality companies on Earth, almost went bankrupt twice, survived a boardroom coup, and is now quietly winning the global budget-travel war.
Act I: The Backpacker Who Lived in 1,000 Hotels (2011–2012)
Ritesh grew up in Bissam Cuttack, a town with no airport, no mall, and no internet until he was 13. His family ran a small hardware shop. Coding? Never touched it. But he loved selling, ever since he sold SIM cards door-to-door at age 12.
In 2011 he got accepted into the Thiel Fellowship-style Indian program called “Peter Thiel’s 20 Under 20” (actually run by Thiel Fellow alumni). He dropped out of college on day three and moved to Delhi.
For the next 18 months he lived like a nomad:
– Slept in a different budget hotel every few nights.
– Ate street food.
– Wrote detailed reviews on TripAdvisor under fake names.
– Kept a notebook rating everything: mattress quality, Wi-Fi speed, cleanliness, owner attitude.
By mid-2012 he had stayed in over 1,000 hotels and realized the same thing everywhere: the rooms were bad, but the owners were desperate to earn more. They just didn’t know how.
So he launched Oravel Stays, an Airbnb clone for budget hotels.
It flopped hard. Too complicated. Owners didn’t want strangers in their properties.
But one thing worked: when Ritesh personally guaranteed quality and put his own branding on the door, travelers trusted it instantly.
That was the spark.
Act II: The Birth of OYO (2013)
October 2013: Ritesh rebrands to OYO Rooms (the “O” stands for “On Your Own”, the “YO” for youth).
The model was radical in India:
– OYO signs contracts with tiny hotels (10–30 rooms).
– Paints the walls white, installs ACs, provides branded linen, Wi-Fi, and toiletries.
– Trains staff on basic hospitality.
– Lists the rooms exclusively on OYO’s app and website at ₹999 ($15) fixed price.
– Takes 22% commission.
He started with one hotel in Gurgaon. Within three months: 50 hotels. Within a year: 1,000 hotels across 10 cities.
He was 19.
Investors finally noticed. In 2015, SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son flew to India, spent 15 minutes with Ritesh, and wrote a $100 million check on the spot, the largest Series A in Indian history at the time.
Act III: The Hypergrowth Rocket Ship (2015–2019)
2015–2018 was pure insanity:
– Raised $3.2 billion total.
– Expanded to Malaysia, Nepal, UK, China, Indonesia, UAE.
– Hit 500,000 rooms (more than Marriott + Hilton combined at the time).
– Valuation soared to $5 billion, then $10 billion.
– Ritesh appeared on the cover of Forbes “30 Under 30 Asia” wearing a hoodie and a grin.
In 2018, at age 25, he became the world’s youngest billionaire on the Hurun Global Rich List (self-made category).
Then came China.
Act IV: The China Disaster and Near-Death Experience (2019–2021)
In 2018 OYO entered China with 10,000 rooms. By late 2019: 500,000 rooms. Bigger than India.
They grew so fast they hired 30,000 employees in China alone.
Then COVID hit. Borders closed. Chinese hotels stopped paying OYO. Losses mounted to $335 million in one quarter.
Back in India, aggressive expansion left thousands of hotel partners unpaid. Lawsuits piled up. Media called it “the WeWork of India.”
Valuation crashed from $10B to under $3B. SoftBank forced governance changes. In 2021 there was a boardroom coup attempt to remove Ritesh as CEO.
He survived, but barely.
Act V: The Greatest Comeback in Indian Startup History (2021–2025)
Instead of selling or quitting, Ritesh did something most 27-year-olds wouldn’t have the guts to do:
He fired 7,000 employees (60% of the company).
Shut down unprofitable markets.
Personally called every angry hotel owner to apologize and restructure debts.
Took zero salary for two years.
By 2023 OYO turned profitable for the first time.
2024: Filed for a $1.2 billion IPO in India (downsized from $2B, but still one of the largest).
2025 update (as of November): OYO is EBITDA-positive every single quarter, operates in 80 countries, has 1.2 million rooms, and is quietly buying distressed hotel chains in Europe and Southeast Asia. Revenue run rate: ~$1.2 billion. Valuation back above $10 billion in secondary trades.
And Ritesh is still only 31.
The 7 Rules That Made a Non-Technical Kid Win
1. Sell before you build
Ritesh sold hotel owners on OYO before he had a single line of code.
2. Standardize the unstandardizable
He turned thousands of chaotic family hotels into a predictable brand.
3. Obsess over unit economics early
His biggest mistake was growing before profitability. His biggest recovery was fixing it.
4. Immigrants win with extreme ownership
Ritesh still personally replies to customer complaints on Twitter at 2 a.m.
5. Survive the valley of death
Most founders quit when the hero story turns into villain arc. He didn’t.
6. Age is irrelevant if results aren’t
He was running a $10B company while most people his age were figuring out Excel.
7. Never forget where you came from
OYO’s global HQ is still in Gurgaon, not San Francisco. He flies economy on short flights.
The Line That Defines Him
In a 2024 interview, when asked about almost losing everything, Ritesh smiled and said:
“I started with ₹9,000 and a backpack. Everything above that is a bonus. When you’ve slept in ₹200 hotels for a year, you’re not afraid of going back.”
Today, over 40 million people a year sleep in an OYO room. Most of them have no idea the company was built by a college dropout who once couldn’t afford a proper meal.
The boy from Bissam Cuttack didn’t just build a company.
He built the largest hotel chain most of the world has never heard of, yet.
And he’s still just getting started.
Here you can look what he created.