It’s a word that pops up constantly in conversation with Ronnie Screwvala, the founder and former CEO of television channel UTV: Disruptive. The adjective that’s a favourite with modern-day entrepreneurs, is also sprinkled throughout his recently released book Dream With Your Eyes Open. “Disruptive does not mean, just for the sake of it. But it’s about thinking differently in areas where I can make a difference,” says the entrepreneur-cum-social philanthropist who is carving out a new space for himself after selling his TV channel.

It’s disruption on a giant scale that he’s hoping to cause in the field of education and sports with start-ups that are now close to being launched. And he’s even looking at causing disruption in his philanthropic ventures that are mostly taking place in rural Maharashtra. He says he divides his time almost equally between philanthropy and promoting new business ventures.

Like many mega-entrepreneurs who’ve made millions and billions at a relatively young age after selling out, Screwvala, 52, is determined to make a second coming in the world of business. “Though it may be hard to believe since it is my second innings — I am actually working harder than I did 20 years back,” says Screwvala who has made private equity investments in 15-odd start-ups including the two immensely successful websites — Lenskart which sells eyewear online and Zivame which is doing brisk business selling lingerie.

But his biggest venture that’s on its way revolves around further education and Screwvala is fired by the idea of turning the field upside down. He wants to offer postgraduate degrees and other specialised courses online and he’s talking both to university professors and to corporate houses to figure out the course content. “About 40 per cent of my time goes in reading and studying and listening to people,” he says. Most crucially, he says, the further education he’s offering will need to create a high degree of employability.

A key element of the online education platform — which he says will be up and running by December — will be that you won’t be studying in isolation. “We will bring in technology in such a way so as to have a study group of five people. Students can bond the way they do in a regular college and they would have an alumni as well,” he says.
Does that sound ambitious? Yes of course. But then Screwvala has a habit of converting even the slightest opportunity into a paying proposition. Even as a child he was enterprising. His first venture as a 10-year-old was to stage a play with the children in his neighbourhood and peddle tickets to the all too willing parents. As a teenager he also sold tickets to his first-floor balcony from where one of the city’s top movie halls could be seen. As the theatre was the venue for twice-a-month events it offered the chance to gaze at top stars.

Screwvala’s other big venture that’s already partly underway is in the sporting arena. In 2014, Screwvala became the owner of U Mumbai, the Mumbai kabaddi team that plays in the Pro Kabaddi League. “Kabaddi is so much of an underdog sport.  All we needed to do is take it out of the red sand and put it on the mat and make the men look reasonably hot. It is a 40-minute, fast paced game and it became compelling TV,” he says.

Next up is likely to be the world of motor sports and particularly bikes. “We are the largest bike nation in the world. Combine it with the picturesque spots in the country and we are staring at an opportunity,” says the entrepreneur. The idea is to have races at the most exotic and picturesque locations in India. He adds: “I am working with the tourism ministry and not the sports ministry on this. For three days it will become the Woodstock Music & Art Fair of India where music meets bike meets tourism. Now does that sound like quite an opportunity?” he asks with a laugh.
Screwvala likes to say that he comes up with practical solutions where slight tweaks make a lot of difference. His Swades Foundation (named after the Shahrukh Khan starrer which was produced by UTV Motion Pictures) is a social organisation started with his wife Zarina that works on altering life in the poorer rural areas. It looks at everything from water and sanitation, to agriculture, education, health and nutrition.

Recently the foundation, to which Screwvala devotes about 40 per cent of his time, provided piped water to several households in Ghonsi village in Maharashtra. Initially the idea was to have a few common taps in each village. But that didn’t make life much easier for the villagers. Says Screwvala: “People were forced to go out to fetch water even late at night even though they thought that there might be a snake or a scorpion there. My input was to have two taps in each house — even though this pushed up the cost by 20 per cent.” But even more than just being about water, Screwvala reckons small changes like this will alter the mindset of people and they will start aspiring for more.

He’s also working on ways of boosting the earnings of the rural people so that they have other sources of income. “In 2015-16 our goal is to have 10,000 entrepreneurs in poultry, cashew, agarbattis, sanitary napkins and mushrooms, amongst the half-a-million people that we work with. That is not something that an NGO thinks of and that’s the disruptive element and the exciting part of what I am doing,” he says.

Step back several decades to Screwvala’s first big venture, which he insists had a disruptive core. While on a visit to London with his father who worked at a British firm J.L. Morrison and Smith & Nephew, Screwvala spotted two state-of-the-art toothbrush making machines at a factory, which were about to be junked.

Screwvala had these shipped to India. “Even though I had zero clue about oral hygiene and I had no money in my pocket at that time, I knew that the technology was new for India,” he recalls. Working with a mix of audacity and self-confidence that, Screwvala admits, was possible only as a rank newcomer, he started Lazer Toothbrushes. He approached companies which sold toothbrushes in India at that time and offered to make brushes for them — and got the contracts.

Screwvala was also the first (he will correct you immediately if you say one of the first), to venture into the cable TV business. Those were the days of a single channel and a TV without a remote. “It took us one year and massive door-to-door calls to make people understand what it was to have a choice of viewing on their TV sets — something which today sounds like going back to BC or something,” he says. Even though multi-channels are so integral to today’s lifestyle, at that time the team needed to concept sell and there were many days when they felt it would not work as nobody was buying it.

“At the end of the first year we had 10,000 connections. And then we changed our goalposts and decided to scale up the operation,” he says. Screwvala decided to target all the hotel chains in India because he knew this would get them many connections at one shot. And there would be domino effect too. “If anyone had experienced cable TV for the first time in a hotel, he would go back home where this would be the talking point — and this would naturally get us even more connections,” he says.

Screwvala was still a relatively small player when global media giant Rupert Murdoch came calling. At the time Screwvala was while still operating from a basement office and that’s where he met Murdoch. Later Murdoch’s team asked Screwvala to fly to London to discuss the possibility of a partnership — the only company in India which had been asked to do so.

Screwvala went on his own thinking that it would be just an initial discussion. However, there were seven people present from News Corp — including two lawyers and two investment bankers — to draft the deal. “I realised that either I did it that day minus my team or I would lose out. I just went ahead with it,” says Screwvala who also ventured into broadcasting on his own and created channels like UTV Bindass, Hungama and Bloomberg UTV.
He laughs about the various ventures that he has overseen: “It looks visionary but it never is. If it succeeds it is visionary but if it doesn’t then who cares for a down and out thing?”

Screwvala has realised that going with the gut feel rather than following in someone else’s footsteps pays rich dividends in the long run. His first offering from UTV Motion Pictures, Dil Ke Jharoke Main, a formula movie was an outright flop — something which Screwvala felt was the likely outcome after watching the initial rushes.

And then the company changed the game-plan. “While we were proud of Swades and Chalte Chalte, it was Rang De Basanti which was certainly a turning point. It established us as a brand that would take a script that no one would have agreed to and actually make it work,” says Screwvala. And then the trend continued with Dev. D, No One Killed Jessica and many others in quick succession. The studio racked up 25 National Awards for nine films between 2006 and 2012.

But does he regret quitting UTV and the media? “I would never do that as I think it would be a waste of time. If you look back and say if this would have happened but then you don’t know what else would have happened,” he says, keeping his eyes firmly on the second innings that’s already underway.