India is the new China. Not because it is like China, but because it is the next billion-person market building technology at scale.
In America, you build an e-commerce company. In India, you build an e-commerce company, a logistics company, a payments company, and an internet adoption company — all at the same time.
Cash-on-delivery was 80% of our orders in the early days. People didn't trust online payments, so we literally collected cash at the door. That's how you build e-commerce in a country without credit cards.
Big Billion Days proved that Indian consumers will shop online if you give them a reason. We did $1.4 billion in five days. India wasn't an e-commerce desert — it was an e-commerce dam waiting to break.
I was 17, traveling across India, and every budget hotel was a gamble. Dirty sheets, broken AC, cockroaches. I thought, what if every cheap hotel room was actually clean and predictable? That question became OYO.