For a creative person it can’t be more drab than this. “Dream With Your Eyes Open”. Where is the fun, where is the uncertainty of the reverie? But turn a few pages of this Rupa publication and you know what Ronnie Screwvala is dealing with. Here is a man who has seen the biggest of dreams in an industry as fickle as entertainment and made them possible. From producing toothbrushes to creating India’s first daily soap, Ronnie has made quite a few successful entries and exits and with UTV built a brand that changed the course of film and television business in India. As he deconstructs his dream for us, like a good old Hindi film, there is action, there is emotion and of course a message to take home.
“After divesting my stake in the UTV to Walt Disney, I wanted to understand how the ecosystem has changed in the last 20-25 years and I figured out despite all the talk of entrepreneurial skills of the common man not much has moved on for the first generation entrepreneurs,” says Ronnie just before his launch in Delhi. “It is still easier for those coming from family business. Also, parents still want to see their kids in a great job. Business is still the second choice. And people still fear failures. One failure and youngsters think khel khatam. They don’t want to talk about them. These were some of the thoughts that triggered my mind and I thought let me see if I can contribute in a small way by sharing my experiences,” says Ronnie, who has described his first failure – a film called Dil Ke Jharoke Main with Manisha Koirala and Vikas Bahl in the lead –– in great detail.
He might call it small but the way the book is being marketed across media, it is huge. Ronnie laughs. “In India non-fiction has a small readership. Even bestsellers go up to only 30,000 to 40,000 and distributors seem satisfied with it. I wanted to use my experience in the media to change it. Let’s see if it works.”
Many years back he successfully did it with films when he invested five crore rupees to market films, whose production budget was five crores. “At that time the unwritten rule was a five crore-film should be marketed with 50 lakh rupees. Better don’t make it at all.” Ronnie proved it wrong and went on to change the way mainstream films were created and marketed in the country. From Rang De Basanti and Swades to Dev.D and Barfi ! From Peepli Live to Mumbai Meri Jaan with Ronnie UTV emerged as the biggest disruptive force in the market. Still he felt like an outsider in an industry where family run production houses used to rule. At one point even Ronnie tried to tie up with Yash Raj Films and Amitabh Bachchan’s Corporation Limited but got to hear only a polite no.
Interestingly, years later Disney, a multinational behemoth but an outsider for the Indian market, saw UTV as an insider and offered to buy a stake in it. Ronnie calls it an interesting corollary but maintains that he never built UTV keeping divestment in mind. “Had that been the case I would not have named a kids channel, Hungama (the first UTV property that Disney showed interest in), something Disney guys found hard pronouncing even after acquiring it. We would not have put Japanese animation where Doraemon became our star property that pulled Disney into the deal.”
Many industry experts feel Phantom a film conglomerate of Anurag Kashyap, Vikramaditya Motwane and Vikas Bahl is ploughing the same field that UTV created and Ronnie is quick to point out that each one of them has been associated with UTV at some point of time. “I have great respect for them.” But at the same time he feels it is time to reinvent the game all over again both in terms of content and marketing. The word disruptive is often loosely bandied about in corporate communication these days. Ronnie also uses it but roots in pragmatism. “Disruption should not be just for the sake of disruption. It needs to be accompanied by deep thought and a vision extending beyond the day after tomorrow. It requires urgency for a long term.”
Ronnie had some background in theatre and perhaps that is the reason that he was able to marry aesthetics with business acumen but he points out more than that it is the ability to back somebody else’s vision. “If you start to see everything from your point of view then the company is going to stagnate.” That is the reason he backed Anurag Basu when he turned up with a sketchy idea of Barfi! after Kites failed to take off. That is the reason he backed Neeraj Pandey despite reservations about the scale and surprise value of A Wednesday.
It is hard to leave a property that you nurture for two decades but for Ronnie passion and emotion don’t figure in the same sentence. “It was hard but I never saw it as abandoning of business. I knew what is exit for me is only a transition for the company and the brand as it moves forward.”
His passion to spark change has now taken him to education, infrastructure and health in rural sector, as unglamorous as it can get, through his foundation called Swades. “We are looking to provide water and health care in the villages adopted by the foundation. It is not a philanthropy job where you have to sign some cheques and attend a couple of meetings. I dedicate 40 per cent of my time to the foundation and my wife Zarina is fully into it. The long term idea is to control migration to cities, creating opportunities in villages and make farming a happy and reliable option. We are not like China where they first created infrastructure in cities to fuel migration. In many places farming is still seen just a means for self sustenance. It should change. Here again we have to work to make them overcome the fear of failure because farmers are still reluctant to go for two crops a year. They fear unpredictable Monsoons might take away even what they have,” Ronnie signs off rejecting any chances of a U-turn.
