OYO’s Ritesh Agarwal Is the Newest Shark Of Shark Tank India

Ritesh Agarwal, the founder and CEO of hotel chain OYO, has joined TV show Shark Tank India as a shark for its upcoming season. 

Making the announcement on X (formerly Twitter), Agarwal said, “@sharktankindia made entrepreneurship a household conversation and I am excited to be a small part of Season 3 and support more entrepreneurs emerging out of every corner of India.”

Agarwal will be joining Peyush Bansal of Lenskart, Anupam Mittal of People Group, Namita Thapar of Emcure, and Vineeta Singh of Sugar Cosmetics in the Season 3 of Shark Tank India.

Sony Entertainment Television, which hosts the reality show where founders pitch their businesses to the sharks, is yet to announce the dates when Season 3 of Shark Tank India would be aired.

Agarwal is one of the leading angel investors in the startup ecosystem and also runs a family office, Aroa Ventures. He has been at the helm of OYO for around a decade now.

The SoftBank-backed startup is on track to report its maiden profitable quarter in Q2 of FY24. Agarwal, in an internal mail to the leadership team, claimed that the startup will report a profit after tax of INR 16 Cr in Q2 of FY24. 

“Our adjusted gross profit margin rose to 43% of revenue and adjusted gross profit increased by 23% to INR 2,347 Cr in FY23 from INR 1,915 Cr in FY22,” Agarwal said in the mail. 

Earlier this year, the IPO-bound startup saw two key exits – Ankit Gupta, its India CEO, and Mandar Vaidya, the head of OYO Europe, quit OYO.

“Both roles were already transitioned 6 months ago to Varun Jain, as COO India, and, Gautam Swaroop, as CEO OYO Vacation Homes, respectively,” an OYO spokesperson said then.

The Delhi NCR-based startup first filed its Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP) with market regulator SEBI in September 2021 for an INR 8,430 Cr ($1.2 Bn) IPO. However, it later took the confidential route to pre-file its draft documents and reduced the IPO size to INR 3,286 Cr – INR 4,929 Cr ($400 Mn – $600 Mn).

Earlier this year, a report by Inc42 highlighted some of the issues with Shark Tank India, with participants accusing the sharks of deliberately delaying investments under various pretexts.

Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.