Ritesh Agarwal (born 16 November 1993) is an Indian entrepreneur and the founder and chief executive of OYO, a hotel company that brings small budget hotels under one brand and booking system. He started it in 2013, aged 19, after dropping out of college, and it grew within a few years into one of the largest hotel chains in the world by number of rooms. He was the first Indian resident to win a Thiel Fellowship.
Quick Facts
| Full name | Ritesh Agarwal |
| Born | 16 November 1993, Bissam Cuttack, Rayagada district, Odisha, India |
| Age | 32 |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur |
| Known for | Founder and CEO of OYO |
| Education | St. John’s Senior Secondary School, Rayagada (college dropout) |
| Spouse | Geetansha Sood (m. 2023) |
| Children | 1 |
Early Life
Agarwal was born into a Marwari family that ran a small shop in southern Odisha and grew up in Rayagada. He taught himself to code as a boy and sold SIM cards at 13. In 2011 he moved to Delhi for college but left within days to work on his own ideas, travelling across India and staying in cheap hotels and guest houses.
Career
In 2012 he started Oravel Stays, a website listing budget rooms. He saw that the real problem was not finding rooms but trusting them: travellers could not tell whether a cheap hotel would be clean. In 2013 he won a Thiel Fellowship, a grant of $100,000 given by the investor Peter Thiel to young people who skip college.
He relaunched the business as OYO Rooms in May 2013, starting with one hotel in Gurugram. OYO signed up small hotels, set standards for linen, air-conditioning and Wi-Fi, and sold the rooms through its app. SoftBank’s Vision Fund became its biggest backer, and the company expanded quickly to China, Southeast Asia, Europe and the United States. It was valued at about $10 billion in 2019, when Agarwal borrowed heavily to increase his own stake.
The pandemic shut down travel in 2020. OYO laid off thousands of staff, pulled back from many markets and shelved plans to list its shares. It later cut costs, reported its first full-year profit for 2023–24 and bought the American budget chain Motel 6 in 2024.
Agarwal joined the television show Shark Tank India as an investor in its third season in 2024.
Personal Life
He married Geetansha Sood in Delhi in March 2023. His father, Ramesh Agarwal, died after a fall from a building in Gurugram days later.
Awards and Honours
Frequently Asked Questions
When and where was Ritesh Agarwal born?
Ritesh Agarwal was born on 16 November 1993 in Bissam Cuttack, Rayagada district, Odisha, India and is 32 years old.
What is Ritesh Agarwal known for?
Known for: Founder and CEO of OYO.
Featured image: Ritesh Agarwal, founder of OYO, speaks at a conference, October 2019. Photo by Steve Jurvetson, licensed under CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
