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The World’s Youngest Billionaire

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A 24-year-old college dropout from a small town in Odisha just became the world’s second-youngest self-made billionaire.

Ritesh Agarwal, the founder and CEO of budget hospitality chain OYO Rooms, landed on the Hurun Global Rich List 2020 as the second-youngest self-made billionaire on the planet, trailing only Kylie Jenner. Hurun pegged his fortune at roughly $1.1 billion, or about ₹7,800 crore, making him the richest self-made Indian entrepreneur under 40. It’s a startling number for a founder who was selling SIM cards as a teenager less than a decade earlier.

• Hurun Global Rich List 2020 ranked Agarwal, then 24, as the world’s second-youngest self-made billionaire, behind only Kylie Jenner, with a net worth near $1.1 billion.
• He launched Oravel Stays, an Airbnb-style listing site, in 2012 at age 18, then became the first Indian selected for the Thiel Fellowship in 2013 — a $100,000 grant that required him to drop out of college.
• Backed by SoftBank’s Vision Fund, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital, OYO hit unicorn status in 2018 and a $10 billion valuation, growing to more than 43,000 properties and 1 million rooms across 800-plus cities in 80 countries by mid-2020.

From SIM Cards to a Thiel Fellowship

Agarwal grew up in Bissam Cuttack, a small town in Odisha, and started out hawking SIM cards before he ever left for New Delhi to attend college. In 2012, at 18, he built Oravel Stays, a listings platform modeled loosely on Airbnb’s approach to short-term rentals. A year later, Peter Thiel’s fellowship program picked him as its first Indian fellow, handing him $100,000 on one condition: leave school and build the business full time.

That bet on a teenager paid off in a way few Thiel Fellows have matched. Agarwal didn’t just tweak Oravel — he scrapped the listings-site model entirely and rebuilt the company around a much bigger problem in Indian travel: nobody could trust what a “budget hotel” actually looked like until they walked in the door.

Turning Oravel Into OYO Rooms

In June 2013, Agarwal relaunched the company as OYO Rooms, standardizing unbranded budget hotels by partnering directly with property owners to guarantee clean rooms, predictable amenities and working Wi-Fi. The proof of concept was a single hotel in Gurgaon, where occupancy jumped from 20% to nearly 90% once OYO’s standards took hold. That kind of jump is what convinced investors this wasn’t just another listings app — it was a franchise-style fix for an entire category of underused hotel inventory.

The model scaled fast because it didn’t require OYO to own a single building. Instead of buying real estate, the company signed up existing budget hotels and layered its brand, booking technology and quality control on top — the same playbook plenty of aspiring founders have since tried to copy after watching stories like the teen entrepreneurs now building companies before they can legally rent a car.

SoftBank’s Big Bet

Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank Vision Fund became OYO’s most significant backer, joined by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital. The company crossed into unicorn territory in 2018 and reached a private market valuation of $10 billion. By mid-2020, OYO’s footprint had stretched well past India — into the United States, China, the United Kingdom, continental Europe and Southeast Asia — with more than 43,000 properties and over 1 million rooms spread across 800-plus cities in 80 countries.

That U.S. expansion drew attention from an unlikely source. During a February 2020 state visit to India, President Donald Trump publicly praised Agarwal’s push into America after being briefed on OYO’s hundreds of domestic locations.

“Not such a small company, by the way. Good job.”

The Hurun Ranking, in Context

Getting named the world’s second-youngest self-made billionaire is a specific, measurable distinction, not just a headline — Hurun’s list ranks entrepreneurs who built their fortunes rather than inherited them, and Agarwal’s spot behind Kylie Jenner made him the youngest self-made billionaire out of India entirely. It’s the kind of ranking that puts a college dropout’s $100,000 Thiel grant next to a $10 billion valuation seven years later.

Agarwal built OYO’s rise on the same instinct that separates most breakout founders from the pack: find an unglamorous, badly-run corner of an industry and fix the boring parts first. Standardized rooms, standardized Wi-Fi, standardized pricing — not flashy, but it turned a 20% occupancy rate in Gurgaon into a global chain with a million rooms on the books.