Ronnie Screwvala, a popular media baron, has recently been introduced as the 12th Shark in the Shark panel of the famous business show Shark Tank India
Here are 10 interesting facts to know about Ronnie Screwvala-
1. He founded UTV in the early days when Media and Entertainment was not a sector or industry and over the period grew it into a media conglomerate
2. He has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics
3. He founded upGrad with a dream of establishing India as the teaching capital of the World
4. He also co-founded the Swades Foundation with his wife Zarina Screwvala with a focus on rural India and adopted villages in Maharashtra to work on their self-sufficiency in water, health, education and livelihood
5. He was born on September 8, 1956 in Mumbai into a Parsi family
6. He also has one daughter named Trishya from his first wife Manjula Nanavati. Swades Foundation co-founder Zarina is his second wife
7. He also founded private equity and venture capital firm Unilazer Ventures through which he has made investments in the Indian new economy companies and start ups
8. He has been named on Esquire's List of the 75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century in 2008 and ranked 78 among the 100 most influential people in the world on the Time 100
9. He was also listed amongst 25 Asia's Most Powerful people by Fortune Magazine
10. One of the most significant milestones of his entrepreneurial journey was having transformed upGrad into India’s largest online higher education company by on-boarding over 18K paid learners and impacting more than 363K individuals globally. Besides numerous awards, upGrad made it to LinkedIn’s ‘Top 25 Startups’ two years in a row in 2018 and 2019