Zarina Screwvala

Screwvala was born in Washington, D.C., in 1961 and moved to India at the age of eight. Her family belongs to the Parsi community; her father, Furdoon Siavax Byramji Mehta (1920-2021), was an officer in the Indian Army's Aviation Corps, and her mother, Villie Mehta, ran a Parsi catering business.

She was educated at the J. B. Petit High School for Girls and took a bachelor's degree in economics at St Xavier's College, Mumbai, followed by a master's degree in marketing and advertising from the Xavier Institute of Communications.

Screwvala began her working life as a production manager on theatre productions directed by Pearl Padamsee, where she met Ronnie Screwvala and Deven Khote. In 1990 the three co-founded UTV Software Communications.

She created and directed television programmes including The Mathemagic Show, and UTV went on to produce the serials Shanti and Hip Hip Hurray. Between 2004 and 2006 she was head of programming and chief operating officer of the children's channel Hungama TV, which was sold to Disney in 2006. She subsequently conceptualised the youth channel UTV Bindass, launched in 2007. She left the company in 2012 after Disney acquired UTV.

While at UTV, Screwvala helped set up the company's social initiative SHARE (Society to Heal, Aid, Restore, Educate), which worked in villages in Maharashtra. In 2012 the work was relaunched as the Swades Foundation, of which she is co-founder and managing trustee.

The foundation works in the Raigad and Ratnagiri districts of Maharashtra on drinking water, sanitation, health and nutrition, education, agriculture, animal husbandry and skills training, with the stated aim of empowering one million rural lives every five to seven years. Screwvala leads a staff of around 300 working across more than 2,000 hamlets.[2][3][4]