The list, released on Wednesday, lists Shah Rukh Khan as the richest Indian actor with an estimated wealth of Rs 10,000 crore. Amitabh Bachchan follows with Rs 4,000 crore, while Salman Khan and Hrithik Roshan have been listed with wealth of Rs 3,000 crore and Rs 2,500 crore, respectively. Shah Rukh’s wealth includes his interests in businesses such as Red Chillies Entertainment and Knight Riders Sports.

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Ritesh Agarwal’s wealth vs Bollywood’s biggest stars

At Rs 19,900 crore, Ritesh’s estimated wealth is around Rs 9,900 crore higher than Shah Rukh Khan’s and nearly twice the actor’s estimated fortune. It is also nearly five times Amitabh Bachchan’s reported wealth and more than six times that of Salman Khan and nearly eight times that of Hrithik Roshan.

Ritesh’s wealth also exceeds the combined Rs 19,500 crore wealth attributed to Shah Rukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Salman Khan and Hrithik Roshan in the list.

The comparison is notable because Ritesh is not a film star but has become a familiar face to television audiences through Shark Tank India. He was part of the third, fourth and fifth season of the Sony TV reality show, where he appears as one of the judges.

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Hurun Global Rich List 2026

Earlier this year, the OYO founder made headlines after entering the Hurun Global Rich List 2026 as India’s youngest billionaire with an estimated wealth of Rs 18,402 crore. He was ranked 2,816th globally, while Shah Rukh Khan and filmmaker Namit Malhotra, both new entrants to the billionaire club, were placed at 3,306.

Hurun also included Ritesh Agarwal among its self-made billionaires aged under 40. The 2026 Hurun Global U40 list said India had eight self-made billionaires in the category, its highest-ever count. The report described him as a 32-year-old OYO entrepreneur who had built one of the world’s largest hospitality companies from Bhubaneswar.

How Ritesh Agarwal built OYO at 19

Ritesh Agarwal founded OYO in 2013 at the age of 19. What began as a budget-hotel aggregator has since grown into a hospitality technology company with a presence across hotels, homes and vacation rentals in markets spanning Asia, Europe and the United States. Today, OYO’s parent company, PRISM, develops technology products and services for the hospitality industry, with the group serving hundreds of thousands of hotels and homes across more than 35 countries.

In an interview with SCREEN ahead of Shark Tank India Season 5, Ritesh recalled that people initially struggled to take him seriously because of his age. He recalled sending cold emails to potential investors without getting responses and eventually finding a major investor in 2015.

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“I was just 18, right out of high school, when I was starting. So, people did not take me seriously at first. They thought a young person was very interested in trying to make a positive difference, but they were not sure if I would be able to do it. Back in the day, when I wrote cold emails, nobody would respond or was not willing to invest. I finally got a big investor in 2015.”

He also spoke about the first hotel he started with in Gurgaon in June 2013.

“It had 20 per cent occupancy before OYO came about, but in a few months, the occupancy grew to 80 to 90 per cent. That was the starting point,” he said.

He added that OYO had since grown to serve more than 17,000 hotels and 1,50,000 homes.

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“Over the years, I have learned that consistency matters. I did not give up, and slowly, more critics started becoming believers,” he added.

The college decision that shaped his career

Ritesh’s entrepreneurial ambitions came at the expense of a conventional college education.

In another conversation with SCREEN, he recalled that when he was 17 and raising his first funding, investors wanted to meet his parents. Their condition, according to Ritesh, was that his parents should agree not to send him to college.

“They said, if they send you to college, then… they wanted my parents to commit that they won’t send me to college, warna unke paise doob jaaenge (else they would lose their money),” he recalled.

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He said the investors also told his father, “Aap nahi jaante aapka beta itna bright hai (You don’t know how bright your son is).”

Ritesh has acknowledged that skipping college was something he sometimes wondered about.

In a 2023 post, he wrote that when people asked whether he missed attending college and receiving a formal education, his answer was a “resounding YES”, while describing the Thiel Fellowship as the adventure that ultimately led to OYO.