Ritesh Agarwal — Indian Teen to OYO Billionaire at 26

Ritesh Agarwal became the youngest Indian billionaire in history at age 26, making his rise seven years faster than the typical tech founder's timeline. Dropping out of college at 17, he joined the Thiel Fellowship and founded OYO Rooms, a budget hotel aggregator that expanded to 80+ countries with 157,000+ hotels, backed by a $1.5 billion SoftBank investment that pushed valuation to $10 billion. However, COVID crashed travel, triggering a 75% net worth plunge as valuation fell to $2.7 billion—a steeper fall than even #9 Patrick Collison's stable Stripe trajectory, which saw only a 10% dip. Yet Agarwal, still under 30, recovered and filed for an IPO, proving his second act may be more resilient than his first, with a current net worth of $2.3 billion.