Ronnie Screwvala

Rohinton Soli Screwvala, known professionally as Ronnie Screwvala, is an Indian entrepreneur, investor and film producer. He has been named on Esquire's List of the 75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century in 2008 and ranked 78 among the 100 most influential people in the world on the Time 100 (compiled by Time Magazine, 2009). He was also listed amongst 25 Asia's Most Powerful people by Fortune Magazine. Based in Mumbai, India, Ronnie pioneered cable television, built a media and entertainment conglomerate (UTV Software Communications) that partnered with News Corp, 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Company, and Bloomberg, and later in 2012, he divested the company to Disney for an enterprise value of US$1.4 billion. From 2013 onward, he and his wife scaled their non-profit, The Swades Foundation, whose goal is to work with a million people in rural India, empower them, and move them out of poverty every 6–7 years before moving onto another geography. He co-founded UpGrad, which is into online education in the higher education and specialization sector, founded a sports company—U Sports—spanning football, e-sports, and kabaddi, and through his investment company, Unilazer Ventures, has been a significant private equity investor in Indian start-ups with early stage investment and significant minority stakes. After his entrepreneurial period, he re-entered the media content industry to build a creative content company—RSVP—in movies and digital content and authored a book titled Dream with Your Eyes Open.