Ritesh Agarwal

Founder & CEO, OYO Rooms

Bissam Cuttack, Rayagada, Odisha

Ritesh Agarwal was born in 1993 in Bissam Cuttack, a small town in the Rayagada district of Odisha. He grew up in modest circumstances, the son of a local businessman, and showed an early fascination with technology and entrepreneurship. By the time he was a teenager, he was already selling SIM cards and writing code.

At 17, he moved to Delhi to pursue engineering, but dropped out to focus on his startup. In 2012, he founded Oravel Stays, a budget accommodation platform that would later become OYO Rooms. He was 19 years old. In 2013, he became the first Indian to be selected for the Thiel Fellowship — a $100,000 grant from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel for young entrepreneurs who choose to skip or stop out of college.

OYO grew from a single hotel in Gurugram to one of the world's largest hospitality chains, operating in over 80 countries and managing more than a million rooms. Ritesh became one of the youngest self-made billionaires in Asia before the age of 30.

He has spoken openly about the loneliness of building something from nothing, the weight of responsibility to his team, and what it means to carry Odisha with him wherever he goes. "I always tell people where I'm from," he has said. "Bissam Cuttack is not on most maps. But it's on mine."

His story is not just about business. It is about what happens when a boy from a small Odia town refuses to accept the limits others set for him.