Ritesh Agarwal

In class 8, he was selling SIM cards in a small town in Odisha.

At 19, Peter Thiel's foundation paid him $100,000 to drop out of college.

He had already dropped out. He lasted three days.

If you think you are too young to be taken seriously, read the story of Ritesh Agarwal.

He grew up behind his family's provisions store, the youngest of four children.

In 2010 he moved to Rajasthan to prepare for IIT.

On weekends he would travel to Delhi and stay in cheap hotels.

Same price, completely different experience every time.

Dirty sheets in one. No water in the next. No way to know before booking.

Most of us would complain and move on.

He started writing down what was broken.

His first company was Oravel Stays, basically an Indian Airbnb.

It did not take off.

So he changed the idea.

Instead of listing rooms, he fixed them.

Same bed sheets. Same bathroom. Same wifi. Same price.

That became OYO.

In 2013 he won the Thiel Fellowship, which pays young founders to skip college.

Fewer than one in a hundred applicants get in.

Then it exploded.

SoftBank poured money in, OYO went into China, America, Europe.

In 2019 he did something very few founders do.

He spent about $2 billion buying shares back from early investors, with help from banks.

That tripled his stake, from around 10% to about 30%.

The deal valued OYO near $10 billion.

He was 25.

Now the hard truth.

That was the peak, and it broke soon after.

Even before covid, OYO was cutting staff, including about 1,200 people in China.

Then covid shut travel down. Thousands were furloughed and hundreds more lost jobs.

Hotel owners complained publicly about the company.

By 2022 SoftBank had marked its stake down to value OYO near $2.7 billion.

From $10 billion to $2.7 billion in three years.

He stayed, and he rebuilt.

The parent company is now called Prism.

In FY26 it made ₹9,358 crore in revenue, up about 50%.

Net profit was ₹994 crore, though ₹678 crore of that came from a tax credit, not from the business itself. Tax credit = a one-time accounting gain, not cash earned from customers

It now has SEBI's approval for a ₹6,650 crore IPO, and a big part of that money is going to pay off debt.

He did not get rich because he was lucky at 19.

He got a second chance because he stayed when the number fell by 70%.

✍🏻 Mantra Joshi

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