Screwvala - Dream With Your Eyes Open: An Entrepreneurial Journey

DREAM WITH YOUR EYES OPEN

Published by
Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd 2015
7/16, Ansari Road, Daryaganj
New Delhi 110002

Sales Centres:
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Copyright Ronnie Screwvala 2015

The views and opinions expressed in this book are the authors own and the facts are as reported by him, which have been verified to the extent possible, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same.

All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

First impression 2015

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The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Printed at Replika Press Pvt. Ltd, India

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated, without the publishers prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.

To Zarina and Trishya,
the wind beneath my every step
even when I did not have wings

And to my mum and dad,
who taught me the true values of life

All proceeds from this book go to our Swades Foundation
and to everyone in our villages in India
who, too, dream with their eyes open

I never thought I would write a book, but when I finally got around to it, less than a year ago, the experience turned out to be exhilarating and cathartic. To go back in time and recall all the incredible people I have had the privilege to work with or partner; to go down memory lane to relive the magical as well as the scary momentsthe highs and lowshas been sensational and brought to the fore so many learnings, till now tucked away in the past, which stay with me as I embark on my new journey.

Thank you, Wynton Hall, for being such a great partner and collaborator in the writing of this book. You understood me so well from the start and you brought structure to the chapters and a tonality to the narrative that makes this book an easy read.

Thank you, Patrick Smith, for your incredible eye for detail, never missing a sliver of a point and for putting it all together.

Thanks to my wife, Zarina, and my daughter, Trishya, to whom I have dedicated this book, for your patience and supportfor bearing with me during all those days and late nights when I was locked in the study, for the many dinner table conversations that veered towards the chapters of the book, and for the many times I would rush in and request you to drop everything (as you so graciously did) to read the few paragraphs I had just written and was excited about.

Thanks to some of my close colleagues and fellow entrepreneurs as also to all of Trishyas best friends for your valuable feedback, detailed and diverse, on the early drafts, which no doubt helped me improve the book.

Thanks to Amrita Pandey, a colleague, who in the ten years I have known her as she worked at UTV, would enter my office room every two years to nudge me to write a book, only to be shooed awaytill one day about a year-and-half ago, when we were in a group, brainstorming on executing the TV show Sharks Tank in India, she once again brought up writing a book and, for the first time, I wrote down on a Post-it: Book?

Thanks to my trusted colleague and executive assistant, Zenobia Tamboli, for her guidance, correction of facts and her commitment through the multiple drafts of the book.

Thanks to Rupa Publications, Kapish Mehra and Ritu Vajpeyi-Mohan, for breaking boundaries in publishing this book, and for holding my hand through the whole process, from an idea to a book on the shelf.

It is the growing spirit of entrepreneurship and leadership in India, coupled with the new wave of optimism, passion, aspiration and ambition, that inspired me to contribute in my small way and write this book.

I am sharing my career arc in headline form, not because this book is about my career per se, but rather to offer a point of reference. In each chapter, I draw on anecdotes that connect my real-life experiences, both the good and the bad, to the books message. These stories arent always presented in chronological order.

My entrepreneurial journey spans twenty-five years till date. My first serious business venture was pioneering cable TV in India in the early 1980s before stumbling on to manufacturing toothbrushes later in the decade; that business, Lazer Brushes, grew to be one of the largest of its kind in India.

My early theatre and front-of-television days, which began as a hobby, attracted me to the media and entertainment business. In the early 1990s, I incorporated UTV with a vision that, at the time, was not so ambitiousto create television programmes for various channels. Over the next five years, we grew in imagination and ambition, created various divisions, and started offering a range of services: from making advertising films and documentaries, to providing in-flight entertainment programming for multiple airlines, dubbing for most Hollywood live action and animation content in India, and setting up a large post-production and special effects studioeven while continuing to create television shows.

Up until then, I had not raised external fundingneither for cable television nor for toothbrushes or UTVmainly because the ecosystem wasnt mature enough then. And there was another reason guiding this decision. I wanted to bootstrap without being answerable to external investors at a time when I focused on growing businesses where predictability was low.

However, by the mid-1990s, I changed my business model. Seeking scale and needing capital, we took on our very first investor, Rupert Murdoch. Soon after, Warburg Pincus, one of the top three global funds, also took a stake in UTV. Our subsidiary built a state-of-the-art post-production studio and, later, a massive animation facility, for which we managed to bring three investors on boardHinduja Finance, Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS) and Mitsui of Japan.

In the early 2000s, we embarked on three major initiatives, amongst many others always in the works. For one, we expanded the UTV footprint across Southeast Asia, specifically to Singapore and Malaysia, to create television programmes and later, even a channel. Second, back from a trip to the US, and inspired by what Sam Walton and Walmart were doing, as also the success of the home shopping channels, Home Shopping Network (HSN) and QVC, I decided to pioneer home shopping and as seen on TV in India. For our home shopping business, separate from UTV, we were able to bring on board marquee Silicon Valley investors, Draper and Walden. Our third initiative was acquiring a South Indian (Tamil) language channel, Vijay TV, from liquor baron Vijay Mallya, which we grew for two years; we then partnered with Star TV for a 50:50 joint venture to broadcast across all four South Indian languages.

By 2006, the scale bug had bitten us. UTV pivoted to a mostly consumer-facing business; we began our expansion towards a broadcast television network, a movie studio and, eventually, games and mobile. Our kids channel, Hungama, led to a long and fruitful partnership with The Walt Disney Company. Soon after, we launched Bindass, Indias first youth channel, and a bouquet of three movie channels under the UTV brand. I personally started a business news channelBloomberg UTVtying up with Bloomberg, the number one global name in business data.