‘100 people told me I was abandoning UTV’: Ronnie Screwvala recounts time selling to Disney, investing in Lenskart

Ronnie Screwvala has many accolades to his name. Coming from a lower-middle-class family, Screwvala’s father told him that whatever he wanted to do, he was there to support him morally, and would not bail him out financially. “Entrepreneurship was not the normal spoken word, and I say that because I think there were two sorts of values that, for me, stood the test of time. One of them is a complete lack of sense of entitlement,” he said at Fortune India’s 40under40 event in Mumbai on Saturday.

Screwvala went on to not only pioneer cable television in India, but also to establish UTV , one of the most successful media conglomerates in India, a venture he exited in 2012 when Disney assumed control of the company. According to Screwvala, the word ‘exiting’ was ostracised. “12-13 years ago, exit was not a good word. I think about 100 people called and said that I am abandoning the media sector. I’m abandoning the company,” he said.

It was only in 2015—when new-age and e-commerce companies began exiting, according to Screwvala—that exit became a glamorous and sought-after word. “For me, it was the crossroads of working with an incredible partner and a brand that was 100 times what I had built, which is the Walt Disney Company. We were working together in India when they popped the question,” he divulged.

Screwvala also did not have an answer for what he wanted to do next. “If I got diluted, who would I be working for? I think those were the cross-sections that came in there. Plus, there was an incredible amount of disruption happening in the industry,” he said. While Screwvala is not a believer of looking at things in hindsight, he still does not have any regrets over exiting the media business.

The serial entrepreneur was also one of the earliest investors in Lenskart. “I was the second investor there, and I went there with the founder (Amit Chaudhary) and Peyush . There were four karts there,” Screwvala recounts. He said that he would invest only if the other three karts are shut down. “He thought I was negotiating, and I said, no, it will be the same value, but that is something that you can do because you have lived it, you have been able to guide it to a certain level, and you can pop the question there,” he explained.