Ritesh Agarwal

Harsh Pamnani writes in Booming Brands – Volume 2, published in 2020, that he was born and raised in a middle-class Marwari family in Bissamcuttack, a small town in the Rayagada district of Odisha; a profile in Open magazine likewise places his birth in Rayagada district. Articles in Business Today and DNA India in 2023 also describe him as born into a Marwari family in Odisha, DNA India adding that he grew up in a small town there.⁠[1][2][3][4]

Pamnani writes that he was naturally curious and began writing software programs at the age of 8; he first wanted to become an aircraft pilot, but his interest turned to business after his elder sister came back from an entrepreneurship festival and mentioned the word “entrepreneur.” The Open magazine profile instead says that he developed a passion for software coding at 13, and TechCrunchTechCrunchTechCrunch is an American technology news outlet founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington and Keith Teare and headquartered in San Francisco; it mainly covers technology companies, startups, and venture capital, and hosts events such as TechCrunch Disrupt. Its ownership passed successively through AOL, Verizon, and Yahoo, and in 2025 Regent announced its acquisition.Open the full entry wrote in 2015 that he started programming in third grade. The profile also quotes him as saying that as a child “my parents usually decided what to wear, what to do.”⁠[1][2][5]

Pamnani writes that he was selling SIM cards and consumer goods at 13; DNA India also writes that he sold SIM cards in the small town where he grew up. The Forbes profile says that he used to design websites for people in his home town.⁠[1][4][6]

Pamnani writes that by Class X his parents had sent him to Kota, in Rajasthan, to prepare for the entrance examination of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), and that in 2009 he started at Bansal Tutorials there. The Open magazine profile says that after moving to Kota to prepare he soon lost interest in the IIT.⁠[1][2]

Pamnani writes that while in Kota he wrote a book, The Encyclopedia of Indian Engineering Colleges, which became a hit on FlipkartFlipkartFlipkart is a Bengaluru-based Indian e-commerce group that Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal started as an online bookstore in 2007. Walmart took a majority stake in 2018, and the group completed its redomiciliation to India in 2026 as it prepares for an Indian listing.Open the full entry.⁠[1]

Pamnani also writes that he went to entrepreneurship events in Delhi in those years, sometimes sneaking in because he could not afford the registration fee, and that because his school in Kota was lax about attendance he worked for entrepreneurs in Delhi and returned to Kota only for examinations.⁠[1]

Articles in Business Today and DNA India in 2023 state that he moved to Delhi for college in 2011 and dropped out after two years. Pamnani’s book instead says that after Class XII he enrolled in a college in Delhi and left after three days to start a business, persuading his parents to let him take a one-year gap between school and college, as other students did to prepare for examinations, but to work on his business idea rather than to study, and promising to go back to college if the venture failed. The Open magazine profile calls him a 17-year-old college dropout.⁠[3][4][1][2]

The Forbes profile states that he founded Oravel in 2012, a company billed as the “Airbnb of India” that later pivoted to OYO. The Open magazine profile says that he raised about Rs 16,000 in Delhi and started Oravel, an Indian take on AirbnbAirbnbAirbnb is a travel platform for booking stays, experiences, and services, co-founded by Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk and headquartered in San Francisco, United States; its Class A common stock trades on Nasdaq under the symbol ABNB. The business began with hosting guests in the founders’ home in 2007, then joined YC’s Winter 2009 batch, and gradually expanded into local experiences, services, and boutique hotels.Open the full entry. Business Today states that Oravel Stays was selected for an accelerator programme run by Venture Nursery in 2012.⁠[6][2][7]

Pamnani writes that Oravel Stays set out to make small hotels, bed-and-breakfasts and inns easier for budget travellers to book, but bookings were few and repeat customers rare; he then spent three to four months staying at more than 100 such properties across India and concluded that the problem was not a shortage of hotels but the unpredictability of the experience. The Open magazine profile likewise says that after about three months of researching bed-and-breakfasts he decided that the real problem was a lack of standardization. He recalled to Hospitality Design: “While I was traveling across India on a budget, I realized unbranded hotels lacked minimum baseline standards.”⁠[1][2][8]

The Open magazine profile states that in his early days as a founder he once had only Rs 35 in his bank account and, having failed to pay his rent on time, was living on the stairs of a rented barsati, a rooftop room.⁠[2]

Business Today states that he launched OYO Rooms in May 2013, using the $100,000 grant of the Thiel FellowshipThiel FellowshipThe Thiel Fellowship is a two-year grant program started by investor Peter Thiel and run by the Thiel Foundation that funds young people who skip or stop out of college to build new things instead. The program has been criticized by figures in education for encouraging young people to leave college.Open the full entry. The Open magazine profile describes OYO Rooms as a chain of branded budget hotels promising standardized facilities and says that it began with a single hotel in Gurgaon (Gurugram); Hospitality Design states that OYO was launched in 2013 to close the gap between supply and demand for standardized stays.⁠[7][3][2][8]

Some articles give 2012 as the year OYO was founded: CoStar wrote in 2024 that he founded Oyo in India in 2012, and The Week wrote in 2026 that he launched the budget-hotel aggregator in 2012 at the age of 18.⁠[9][10]

He was on the list of 20 Thiel Fellowship fellows of 2013 announced on May 9, 2013; the list published by Business InsiderBusiness InsiderBusiness Insider is a digital business-news organization.Open the full entry (republished by Entrepreneur) gives his age as 19 and his home town as New Delhi, India. Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Thiel is an American entrepreneur and investor, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund and founded the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young people to leave college and build new things; his public skepticism of higher education, his support for Trump in 2016, and his funding of litigation against Gawker Media have drawn controversy.Open the full entry gave each fellow $100,000 over two years on condition that they leave school to build a company, with mentoring from the Thiel Foundation’s network.⁠[11][12]

The list describes him as one of India’s youngest entrepreneurs to raise angel investment, running OYO Inns, a chain of affordable, technology-enabled inns, and Oravel, a popular alternative to hotels in India; as a Thiel Fellow he planned to use technology to provide affordable, standardized accommodation in emerging economies, starting with India. An IANS wire story of May 11 states that he was one of two Indians among that year’s “20 Under 20” Thiel Fellows and was then living in New Delhi.⁠[11][12]

The Open magazine profile says that at 19 he became the first Indian Thiel Fellow; Pamnani writes that he was the first Indian resident to receive the fellowship; Skift’s speaker biography calls him one of the first Asian residents to be accepted.⁠[2][1][13]

An article in Business Insider India states that an entrepreneur friend who was then a TED Fellow first mentioned the fellowship to him; he had little hope, since few Indian residents had been selected, but he applied, answered the questions and was interviewed over Skype. After being chosen he spent the first quarter in the Bay Area learning from mentors and other founders, then returned to India to work full-time on OYO Rooms; fellows sent in monthly reports of their exercise and sleep hours. He said: “The opportunity to be a part of the Thiel and the kind of experience I had was totally unimaginable.”⁠[14]

He said in Hospitality Design: “Getting mentored by Peter Thiel truly changed my worldview.” Pamnani writes that he valued his time in Silicon Valley and Thiel’s mentoring, and that he used the fellowship money to develop the idea behind Oravel.⁠[8][1]

TechCrunch wrote on April 6, 2015 that he had raised $25 million from Lightspeed, Sequoia and others, with Greenoaks CapitalGreenoaksGreenoaks is an American investment firm co-founded by Neil Mehta in 2012 and known for concentrated, long-term investing; it made an early, large bet on the Korean e-commerce company Coupang and has invested in companies including Wiz, Stripe, Databricks, and Anthropic. In May 2026, it co-led Anthropic’s $65 billion Series H funding round with Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, and Sequoia Capital.Open the full entry and DSG Consumer Partners also taking part, which the article called the largest funding round to date for a Thiel Fellow project. OYO then worked with more than 200 hotels in 10 Indian cities, planned to reach 1,000 hotels in 25 cities by the end of the year and handled around 60,000 stays a month; it partnered with property owners and spent about a week with each partner hotel bringing its facilities up to a baseline standard before listing it, at prices starting from 999 rupees ($16) a night. Of the places he had stayed before, he said: “The sockets wouldn’t be working. Or you couldn’t pay by card the next morning,” and he added: “With OYO, you know exactly what you’re going to get.”⁠[5]

The Business Insider India article states that after the fellowship his company raised $25 million in March from Sequoia Capital IndiaPeak XV PartnersPeak XV Partners is a venture capital firm that grew out of Sequoia’s India and Southeast Asia business, investing across the seed, venture and growth stages in markets including India, Asia-Pacific and the United States. The firm began operating as Sequoia Capital India in 2006 and adopted its current name and became independent in 2023.Open the full entry Advisors, Greenoak Capital, Lightspeed India and DSG Consumer Partners, which the article calls probably the largest round raised by any Thiel Fellowship graduate.⁠[14]

The Forbes profile states that OYO had raised more than $125 million, including $100 million in August 2015 in a round led by SoftBankSoftBank GroupSoftBank Group (SoftBank Group Corp.) is an investment holding company headquartered in Tokyo, founded by Masayoshi Son in 1981. Starting out as a distributor of personal computer software, it moved into the internet, broadband and mobile communications, and has since become an investment group centered on AI-related assets such as Arm, the SoftBank Vision Funds and OpenAI.Open the full entry; at the time of writing, when it gave his age as 22, OYO had about 4,200 small hotels in 152 Indian cities and booked about a million room nights a month.⁠[6]

BloombergBloomberg L.P.Bloomberg L.P. is a global financial technology, data and media company founded by Michael Bloomberg in 1981. It began by providing terminal services that deliver data, analytics and news to financial professionals, and launched Bloomberg News in 1990. Michael Bloomberg has pledged the vast majority of the company’s profits to his philanthropic organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies.Open the full entry wrote in 2023 that Masayoshi SonMasayoshi SonMasayoshi Son (born 1957) is a Japanese entrepreneur and investor who founded SoftBank Group in 1981 and has served as its chairman and CEO ever since. He is known for early investments in Yahoo and Alibaba, the acquisitions of Sprint and Arm, the nearly $100 billion SoftBank Vision Fund, and in recent years his bets on OpenAI and AI infrastructure.Open the full entry, founder of SoftBank Group, had mentored him since 2015.⁠[15]

The Open magazine profile, marked as last updated on November 5, 2015, states that the company had recently received Rs 630 crore from SoftBank Group of Japan, was valued at $400 million and had raised Rs 800 crore in all; OYO then covered about 130 cities and 20,000 rooms and had more than 2,000 employees.⁠[2]

The profile quotes him: “I am still 21 and the youngest member of my company,” and “Sometimes I wonder if I would hire myself for this company and the answer is sadly a ‘No’.”⁠[2]

The profile states that he had bought an Audi A4, a “necessary luxury” in keeping with what was expected of him, and that three months earlier, at his family’s insistence, he had stopped living out of a backpack and moved into a rented apartment. He did yoga every day and took one day a month out of the city, going only to the hills, where he generally ended up working, befriending hotel staff and scouting properties for OYO.⁠[2]

The profile also says that his former co-founder Manish Sinha accused him of “not being transparent” in their dealings and that he chose to ignore such controversies; that OYO took its rival ZO Rooms to court over alleged theft of data and software, a suit often seen as an attempt to block ZO’s funding; and that ZO Rooms placed standees and posters mocking the OYO app at its launch event at the India Habitat Centre in Delhi.⁠[2]

A Reuters article of July 19, 2019 (republished by Business Today) states that he was to buy back $2 billion of OYO shares, which a person familiar with the matter said would raise his stake to about 30% from 10%; an OYO statement said that existing investors Lightspeed Venture PartnersLightspeed Venture PartnersLightspeed Venture Partners backs companies from seed through late-stage financing. Its website distinguishes Lightspeed Management Company (LSVP) from Lightspeed India Partners (LSIP): the two are separately operated investment advisers, with the U.S., European, and Israeli offices belonging to LSVP and the India and Southeast Asia offices belonging to LSIP.Open the full entry and Sequoia India were selling part of their holdings; the round valued the company at $10 billion, SoftBank owned about 45%, and the money was to come from institutional lenders and financial partners.⁠[16]

The Week wrote the next day that the buyer was RA Hospitality Holdings, a Cayman Islands company that he had set up, which had signed a $2 billion management investment round in OYO Hotels & Homes made up of a primary and a secondary part, the $700 million primary part being funded through “debt and equity”; Sequoia CapitalSequoia CapitalSequoia Capital is a venture capital firm founded by Don Valentine in 1972, investing from the seed stage through the growth stage. Its historical investments include Apple, Cisco, Google, YouTube, Airbnb, and Stripe; in 2021 it introduced the Sequoia Capital Fund structure, which can continue to hold public securities, and in 2023 its regional businesses became independent brands and partnerships.Open the full entry and Lightspeed were each selling 5 percentage points of their roughly 10% holdings. The article states that he then held less than 10% and aimed to rise above 30%, and that SoftBank held about 48%; he said he was “deeply humbled and delighted to have gotten the support of all our investors.” OYO then had about one million rooms worldwide, about 200,000 of them in India.⁠[17]

Bloomberg wrote in 2023 that in 2019 Masayoshi Son personally guaranteed a $2 billion loan he took from Japanese banks, which raised his stake to more than a third. TechCrunch wrote in 2024 that in 2019 he had agreed to invest $1.5 billion at a $10 billion valuation, and that OYO had never disclosed how the money was secured, on what terms, or its current status. The Week wrote in 2020 that the buyback drew considerable controversy.⁠[15][18][19]

A profile in Hospitality Design on August 7, 2019 states that OYO then had more than 23,000 hotels and 46,000 vacation homes in 74 countries, mostly through reflagging existing properties, and aimed to become the world’s largest hotel brand by 2023; it had just announced a $300 million investment in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry, where it already ran 50 hotels in 23 cities; and Airbnb’s investment had helped make it a global player. The article describes him as 25 and based in India, with an estimated worth of $365 million; his goal, he said, was to be “bigger than the top three to four chains combined.”⁠[8]

CoStar states that OYO entered the Americas in 2019 and that year partnered with Highgate to reflag the Hooters hotel and casino in Las Vegas as the 657-room OYO Hotel and Casino.⁠[9]

The Week wrote on February 27, 2020 that he entered the Hurun Global Rich List 2020 with a fortune of $1.1 billion (Rs 7,800 crore), making him the world’s second-youngest self-made billionaire after Kylie Jenner, who had the same $1.1 billion, and the youngest Indian on the list. Business Today in 2023 gave the figure as about Rs 7,253 crore.⁠[19][7]

The same article states that OYO had laid off 20% of its 12,000 staff in India at the end of 2019, had pulled out of 200 of the 600 Indian cities it served, and was losing partner hotels that complained of hidden charges and a lack of transparency.⁠[19]

YourStory states that Oravel Stays Limited filed a draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) for an initial public offering of up to Rs 8,430 crore (about $1.16 billion), made up of a fresh issue of up to Rs 7,000 crore and an offer for sale of up to Rs 1,430 crore; he held 34% and was not diluting it in the offering; SoftBank held more than 45%, and other investors included Lightspeed, Airbnb, Grab, Microsoft and Sequoia; the company was headquartered in Gurugram. TechCrunch states that OYO filed for its IPO in 2021, seeking about $1.2 billion at a valuation of about $12 billion.⁠[20][18]

Among the board members listed by Inc42 in 2026, Bejul Somaia, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, Troy Matthew Alstead, William Steve Albrecht and the Indian para-athlete Deepa Malik have been independent directors since September 26, 2021.⁠[21]

Bloomberg wrote on March 3, 2023 that he, then 29, would hold a wedding reception in New Delhi the following week, to be attended by Masayoshi Son, with India’s prime minister Narendra Modi and Mukesh AmbaniMukesh AmbaniMukesh Ambani is an Indian industrialist who is chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries and chairman of Jio Platforms. He led Reliance’s expansion in refining, retail, and telecommunications.Open the full entry, chairman of Reliance IndustriesReliance IndustriesReliance Industries Limited (RIL) is a listed conglomerate headquartered in Mumbai, India, founded by Dhirubhai Ambani and now led by Mukesh Ambani as chairman and managing director. Starting in textiles, it expanded step by step into polyester, petrochemicals, refining, and oil and gas production, and then into retail, telecommunications and digital services, media, and new energy; its Jio unit is the telecom operator with the most broadband subscribers in India.Open the full entry, also expected, along with executives of SoftBank and of OYO backers such as Airbnb and Lightspeed.⁠[15]

DNA India wrote on March 7 that he had married Geetansha Sood and that Union Minister Prahlad Singh Patel had met the couple on Tuesday and shared pictures of the meeting. Business Today states that the reception was held on Tuesday at a five-star hotel in Delhi, with guests including Masayoshi Son, Sunil Bharti MittalSunil MittalSunil Mittal is an Indian entrepreneur and the founder and chairman of Bharti Enterprises. He started in 1976 by manufacturing bicycle components in Ludhiana, entered mobile communications under the Airtel brand in the 1990s, and built Bharti Airtel into a major telecom operator in India and Africa; he also led Bharti’s acquisition of the satellite company OneWeb and is co-chair of Eutelsat.Open the full entry, chairman of Bharti Airtel, and Rakesh Bharti Mittal; The Tribune writes that the Chief Minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal, and start-up founders and investors including Masayoshi Son attended the reception.⁠[4][3][22]

A PTI report states that on March 10, 2023 his father, Ramesh Agarwal, died after falling from the 20th floor of a residential high-rise in Gurugram; Virender Vij, Deputy Commissioner of Police (East), said that the fall occurred at around 1 p.m., that police recorded the statement of a family member and held an inquest under Section 174 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and that the body was handed to the family after a post-mortem examination. An IANS wire story gives his father’s full name as Ramesh Prasad Agarwal and states that he was taken to Paras Hospital, where he was declared brought dead; police said that the preliminary finding pointed to an accidental death pending a detailed investigation, that no suicide note had been found and that the family had not lodged a complaint. The IANS story’s summary gives the date as Friday, March 11, while his own statement gives March 10. The Tribune notes that the death came days after his wedding.⁠[23][24][22]

In a statement he called his father “our guiding light and strength,” said that he had “lived a full life,” and asked people to “respect our privacy in this time of grief.”⁠[23][24]

Business Today wrote on September 30, 2023 that he, at 29, was joining the panel of the third season of Shark Tank India as its youngest “Shark”; the other judges that season were Aman Gupta of boAt, Amit Jain of CarDekhoCarDekhoCarDekho is an automotive marketplace and information platform headquartered in Jaipur, India, operated by Girnar Software, offering new-car information and comparison, used-car buying and selling, car finance and insurance.Open the full entry, Anupam Mittal of Shaadi.com, Namita Thapar of Emcure Pharmaceuticals, Vineeta Singh of SUGAR Cosmetics and Peyush Bansal of Lenskart. The World Economic Forum biography states that he has been a judge on the series since 2024.⁠[7][25]

TechCrunch wrote on August 11, 2024 that OYO had raised $173.5 million in a Series G round at a valuation of $2.4 billion, far below its peak of $10 billion, with most of the money coming from Patient Capital, which he runs, InCred Wealth and J&A Partners. The article states that SoftBank had internally cut its valuation of OYO to $2.7 billion in 2022, a markdown for which OYO said there was “no rational basis”; that, by Tracxn’s count, OYO had raised about $3.3 billion in equity and debt; and that its existing investors included SoftBank, with more than 40%, Airbnb, Peak XV Partners, Microsoft and Lightspeed Venture Partners.⁠[18]

TechCrunch states that earlier in 2024 OYO had withdrawn its draft red herring prospectus for the second time and that the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) had never approved its application; The Week wrote in 2026 that the company had filed and withdrawn draft IPO papers between 2021 and May 2024.⁠[18][10]

CoStar wrote on September 20, 2024 that Oravel Stays was to acquire G6 Hospitality, parent of the Motel 6 and Studio 6 brands, from Blackstone Real Estate for $525 million in cash, with closing expected in the fourth quarter of 2024; Motel 6 had more than 1,450 hotels in the United States and Canada and Studio 6 more than 200 hotels, while OYO operated more than 320 hotels across 35 U.S. states and had added nearly 100 U.S. properties in 2023. Gautam Swaroop, chief executive of Oyo International, said: “This acquisition is a significant milestone for a startup company like us to strengthen our international presence.”⁠[9]

Hotel Dive states that the acquisition from BlackstoneBlackstoneBlackstone is an alternative asset manager serving institutional and individual investors. Its official website states that its assets under management exceeded $1.3 trillion as of June 30, 2026.Open the full entry closed at the end of 2024.⁠[26]

Business Today wrote on February 26, 2025 that he had taken his son to the Maha Kumbh in Prayagraj; the article names the son as Aryan, while his own post calls him “Ary.” Recalling his first visit to the Kumbh Mela more than 20 years earlier, he wrote that he had felt “so small, yet part of something so much bigger.”⁠[27]

Hotel Dive wrote on September 9, 2025 that OYO’s parent company, Oravel Stays, had been renamed Prism, a name that the company said reflected its expanded global portfolio and long-term vision; its brands included OYO, Townhouse, Sunday and Palette, as well as Motel 6 and Studio 6, acquired with G6 Hospitality. He said that the change “marks the establishment of a future-ready corporate architecture.” In June of that year he had said that OYO, Motel 6 and Studio 6 would operate as separate brands and that Studio 6 “is going to be a big focus of growth”; the company planned to add more than 150 hotels under the two brands in 2025.⁠[26]

Business Standard wrote on October 10, 2025 that PRISM had realigned its leadership: Ankit Tandon became chief operating officer of PRISM and chief executive for Europe, also overseeing the U.S. market including G6 Hospitality, while Gautam Swaroop, who had led the international business for five years, left and would advise him and the leadership team. In a statement he said: “Gautam has been a close partner over the last five years,” and that the new roles would “help us accelerate global growth with sharper execution and an even stronger focus on customers.”⁠[28]

The Week wrote on June 30, 2026 that Oravel Stays, renamed Prism, had filed an updated draft red herring prospectus with SEBI for an all-fresh issue of up to Rs 6,650 crore with no offer for sale, with the option of a pre-IPO placement of up to Rs 1,330 crore, the proceeds going mainly to repay about $526.33 million borrowed by its Singapore subsidiary, Oravel Stays Singapore Pte. Ltd. He held 6.59% directly and 20.12% through RA Hospitality Holdings (Cayman) and was not selling; SoftBank held 40.04% through SVF India Holdings (Cayman) Limited, and Airbnb 1.22%. Inc42 adds that he also held 3.81% through Patient Capital Investments.⁠[10][21]

The Week states that as of December 31, 2025 Prism had 293,554 storefronts, spanning hotels, vacation homes and listings, in more than 35 countries; in the nine months to December 2025 its revenue from operations was Rs 6,940.97 crore, of which Rs 5,814.27 crore came from overseas, and its net profit Rs 748.34 crore, against Rs 244.82 crore in fiscal 2025 and Rs 229.58 crore in fiscal 2024.⁠[10]

Inc42 states that he is group chief executive and chairman and a member of the FICCI executive committee; the other directors include Aditya Ghosh, a non-executive nominee director since December 13, 2019, Sumer Juneja, a managing partner at SoftBank Investment Advisors and a non-executive nominee director since July 9, 2024, and Ajay Tyagi, a former chairman of SEBI and an independent director since February 1, 2026.⁠[21]

As of November 2026, the PRISM website lists him in its leadership team as founder and group CEO and in its board as founder and chairman; its investor-relations page names him chairman of the board and a member of the nomination and remuneration committee.⁠[29][30]

The PRISM website gives its figures for fiscal 2025 as gross booking value of about Rs 16,250 crore, revenue of Rs 6,252 crore and EBITDA of Rs 1,083 crore, with more than 174,000 assets in more than 35 countries. The World Economic Forum biography states that the company serves about 185,000 hotels and homes in 35 countries, that its investors include MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft is a technology company founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975 and headquartered in Redmond, Washington, with businesses spanning Windows, Microsoft 365, Azure, enterprise software, artificial intelligence, gaming and devices.Open the full entry, Airbnb, SoftBank, Peak XV Partners and Lightspeed, and that its European vacation-rental businesses include DanCenter, Belvilla and Traum-Ferienwohnungen.⁠[29][25]

The World Economic Forum biography states that he was nominated by the Government of India as a member of the India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF) Trust and sits on its finance committee, and that he is a member of the FICCI executive committee and of the India–UK CEOs Forum; Skift’s speaker biography states that he is a member of the National Council of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and has more than 2.2 million followers on social media.⁠[25][13]

The World Economic Forum biography lists his honours: ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry “30 Under 30” and The Economic Times “40 Under 40” in 2016, Fortune’s “Tycoons of Tomorrow” award in 2018, Bloomberg Businessweek’s Bloomberg 50 and CNBCCNBCCNBC is an American business and financial news cable channel launched by NBC in 1989; it merged with its rival FNN in 1991 and since January 2026 has been part of Versant Media Group, spun off from Comcast.Open the full entry’s “Young Turk of the Year” in 2019, and Fortune’s “40 under 40” in 2025.⁠[25][13]

PRISM: Official website: https://www.prismlife.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[29]

OYO: Official website: https://www.oyorooms.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[31]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[32]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/riteshagar/ (opens in a new window).⁠[29]

X: Public account: https://x.com/riteshagar (opens in a new window).⁠[33]