Ronnie Screwvala

Screwvala was born into a Parsi family in Mumbai and educated at the Cathedral and John Connon School and Sydenham College. He began in cable television in Mumbai in the early 1980s and also ran a toothbrush manufacturing business before founding UTV, which grew into a media group covering film production, television, broadcasting and gaming. UTV listed publicly in 2005 and was acquired by Disney in 2012 at an enterprise value of about 1.4 billion US dollars.

He subsequently founded the investment firm Unilazer Ventures, the film production company RSVP Movies, the sports business U Sports, and co-founded the online higher education company upGrad.

The philanthropic work began as UTV's corporate social responsibility arm, the Society to Heal, Aid, Restore, Educate (SHARE), set up by Zarina and Ronnie Screwvala. In 2012, after the sale of UTV, it was relaunched as the Swades Foundation and the couple turned their attention primarily to philanthropy.

Swades works to a stated aim of lifting a million people out of rural poverty every five years, using what it describes as a 360-degree model covering water and sanitation, health, education and economic development, with an emphasis on community ownership. It began in Raigad district of Maharashtra and later expanded to blocks in Nashik and Palghar districts, working through several hundred full-time staff and thousands of community volunteers. Reported outputs include tens of thousands of household toilets built and cataract surgeries performed, and thousands of young people given vocational training.

Screwvala was named in Esquire's list of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century in 2008, appeared on Time magazine's list of influential people, and was included by Fortune among the most powerful people in Asia. Films he produced, including 'Rang De Basanti' and 'Barfi!', won National Film Awards and Filmfare Awards.[2][3][4][5]