Executive Dossier

“Good ideas always find an investor, so there is no point compromising with the idea:” Ronnie Screwvala

Published

11 years ago

April 8, 2015

20 years back when the word entrepreneur was rarely pronounced correctly, a 19 year old man in the midst of great legacy businesses turned out to be a stand-out first generation entrepreneur, who fearlessly kept invading into undiscovered territories.

After starting as a local cable operator, he went on to finding United Television Group (UTV), ventured into sports with Kabaddi and funded e-commerce enterprises like Lenskart and Zivame. While the world was witnessing catastrophes, he decided to turn philanthropist with the Swadesh Foundation. From Shanti on Doordarshan to Swadesh on the big screen, from Rang de Basanti to Dev D, he has enumerable number of trophies in his cabinet.

The distinguished voyage that ignites million minds, the role model for aspiring entrepreneurs in India – Ronnie Screwvala in conversation with Indiantelevision.com’s Anirban Roy Choudhury, shares his priceless guidelines for young aspirants.

Excerpts:

What triggered you to pen Dream with Your Eyes Open?

Entrepreneurship is a challenge and the perception that only people with huge initial capital can become an entrepreneur is a myth and that’s the message I wanted to convey and that’s where the book came into picture.

Dream With Your Eyes Open is not an autobiography but a voyage that has both highs and lows, failures and success, encouragement and demotivation. Another reason behind penning down the book is to encourage aspirants to go for entrepreneurship passionately and not take it as a second option.

What do you think is stopping India from becoming a global leader when it comes to entrepreneurship?

20 years back when I started, people could hardly pronounce the word entrepreneurship. Even today, while on the one side, there are a fair amount of businesses, on the other, there is huge parental pressure of going and getting a good job. Entrepreneurship has always been plan B. But that doesn’t stand true.

One can either go and get a good job or turn an entrepreneur – both are equally respectable. The most important reason for less growth is the fear of failure. In India, people don’t talk about this fear and if they do, they can’t handle it. For most people, failure means the end of the game… the fear that everything is over is what acts as an obstacle.

The thought process needs to be that if you failed yesterday, you should see today as another day and move forward. When you have such a fear about failure, you don’t start. That is one of the reasons why India is ranked between 140 to 150 when it comes to entrepreneuring nations.

How does an aspiring entrepreneur deal with the intriguing question of ‘How do I get funded’? Do you think in order to find that answer, the basic idea gets feeble or compromised?

Everyone in India thinks that you need an investor to start a business and finding one is the biggest challenge. In my opinion, that’s not the procedure that you need to follow always. If we look at the entrepreneurs who are prospering today, all of them bootstrapped themselves on their own. Bootstrapping is a must when it comes to entrepreneurship. You have your idea and you should start executing it and only after you reach a particular level, should you go for an investor.

Your success ratio goes up if you bootstrap first and then go for an investor. If you get an investor early on, you get spoilt. The entire work culture changes and half the time the investor runs the business that you are supposed to run. The hunger is much more when you are doing it on your own and hence if you have an idea, you should start executing it and after you have concept proofed it to yourself, you go for the investor. A good idea will always find an investor therefore there is no point compromising with the idea.

Is stagnancy another reason behind the low rate of entrepreneurship growth in India? Do you think one should have the hunger of invading into new territories?

It’s good that these questions are coming now because a few years back, no one thought about what happens after the substantial establishment of a business. In India, after a certain level we refrain from moving forward, get stagnant and eventually start downscaling.

In business, downscaling begins the moment stagnancy sets in. So, one should always be open to venturing into new territories as entrepreneurship doesn’t mean earning a livelihood but generating employment. The more we explore, the more are our chances of succeeding.

Do you think digital can give birth to a non-advertiser source of revenue model, which will be subscription based?

If we see globally Google, which is the world’s number one company, has taken its platform YouTube and left it free. It runs on advertising. Facebook is also on advertising. If we look at it from that perspective, that’s where it’s going.

Let’s face it, in two weeks’ time, a newly released movie is available on Tata Sky for Rs 75 but people are refraining from opting for that as there are pirated DVDs available for Rs 35. Piracy is a huge barrier of subscription based model and to counter piracy we need consumer behaviour to change, which is a slow process and will take time.

Digital media is cost efficient. The capital investment is less when compared to the other mass medium platforms and hence there is a slim chance of having a subscription based revenue model. However, it will take time as there are bandwidth and technological issues that need to be sorted first. For now, I think advertising is going to be a long-term stay.

Don’t you think an investor, after financing the concept, at some point of time starts regulating the strategic affairs?

If you are a strong entrepreneur, you will never let anyone regulate you. I think there is a misconception that an investor comes in to regulate. Investors have two aspects: firstly, his risk capital is higher than most entrepreneurs because he is choosing one out of 999 and secondly, all investors get into a portfolio investment mode where they know out of 10, five will fail, three will somehow sustain and two will succeed. Who else in the entire cycle has got a risk of five failures out of 10? So, investors are seasoned veterans, who take their decision after enormous number of research and knowledge so that they put their money in right place.

Investors’ key is to back entrepreneurs with whatever they are doing and not regulate them. So it’s a misconception that an investor regulates. Yes, if things go wrong, an investor may get hyper and interfere with a perception that he can add value. It’s a myth that investors regulate a company.

What’s your opinion on the Indian eco-system? Is there enough encouragement and support from the Government’s side for an aspiring entrepreneur?

I don’t think it’s the government’s job to support. The thing that everyone is looking at is ease to do business. So the business environment has to be simplified by the government. When it comes to taxation, with 30 per cent tax we are one of the least taxed nations of the world. The tax structure in the UK and the US is higher than India. With the Goods and Service Tax (GST), it will come down to 16 per cent, which solves many problems. In the UK, value added tax (VAT) is at 17 per cent so there is no room for blaming the government.

The reason why service tax was increased is to bring it closer to GST. The complication lies in the number of regulations and multiple-window clearances. The media is the least controlled in India. In the US, you have to be a citizen of the United States to be able to operate any digital or broadcast media, whereas in India anyone can operate an entertainment venture and hence when it comes to democracy and freedom, India beyond question beats the rest.

Regulations make doing business complicated in India as there is no single body that deals with all the regulatory issues, which makes opening a business in 10 days impossible.

Do you think it’s important to add entrepreneurship as one of the major aspect when it comes to academic upbringing of the youth in India?

There are 10 million graduates coming out of college every year. Do we have jobs for all of them? The answer is a big no. The only way of tackling that problem is adding entrepreneurship in the curriculum as early as possible. I started at 19, so an early start is possible provided you think about it at an early stage. The manifestation should be there. The target should not be to get a job and then become an entrepreneur.

Managers and presidents of big companies should think about where they will stand ten years down the line when there will be a hundred million skilled youth looking for jobs. Hence they should devote time into entrepreneurship, which will provide job to those skilled people.

You are venturing in motorsport now. Can you throw some light on it?

Well, yes I am venturing into motorsport. However, the report stating an investment of Rs 300 crore is incorrect. Nowadays, whatever you do, a zero gets added automatically. Here motor sports doesn’t mean cars. It caters to bikers in India, which is the largest bike selling nation of the world. The over 250cc category has grown at an incredibly high rate in last five years and we are looking at a tourism based sport. Currently, we are researching on the ten most exotic places in India, where on television one will enjoy India’s natural beauty along with skilled bikers. The plan is to make it a tourism cum sporting event.

In the beginning, we will get a mix of Indian and international bikers, as the aim is to make it world class. Each team will have one Indian and one foreign biker for the first two years and after that we would look at making it a 100 per cent Indian event.

From the first super-flop Dil Ke Jharoke Mein to the blockbuster entrepreneur writing his book, how will you describe the versatile voyage of yours?

The opening four lines in my book is about the biggest failure of my life Dil Ke Jharoke Mein, which is what I started with. The concept behind starting the book with that was to convey that failure is just a part of life and not the end of the world.

My journey so far has been to not stop after a failure but to keep moving on. Cable was different, UTV was different and sports is different. I have always rediscovered myself and for me that’s the way forward.

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Executive Dossier

Game on, fame on as Good Game hunts India’s first global gaming star

Published

3 weeks ago

January 27, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: Game faces on, pressure high India’s gaming ambitions are levelling up. Good Game, billed as the world’s first as-live global gaming reality show, has officially launched in India with a bold mission: to crown the country’s first Global Gaming Superstar.

Blending esports with mainstream entertainment, the show brings together competitive gaming, creativity and on-camera performance in a format that tests more than just joystick skills. Contestants will be judged on gameplay, screen presence and their ability to perform under pressure, reflecting how gaming has evolved from pastime to profession and pop culture currency.

Fronting the show are three high-profile ambassadors: actor and entrepreneur Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Indian cricket star Rishabh Pant, and gaming creator Ujjwal Chaurasia. The winner will take home Rs 1 crore ($100,000) among the largest prize pools for any Indian reality show along with the chance to represent India on a global stage.

Backed by a planned annual investment of up to Rs 100 crore, Good Game is also courting brand partners, promising a minimum reach of 500 million among India’s core youth audience. The creators position the show as a bridge between entertainment and interactive culture, offering long-format content, community engagement and commercial scale.

Auditions are now open to Indian citizens aged 18 and above, inviting amateur and professional gamers, creators and performers alike. Shortlisted candidates will be called for in-person auditions in Mumbai on 14 and 15 February, and in Delhi on 28 February and 1 March 2026.

With big money, big names and even bigger ambition, Good Game signals a shift in how India views gaming not just as play, but as performance, profession and prime-time spectacle.

Digital

SpotDraft hires new CMO and CFO to fuel global push for its AI contract platform

Published

2 months ago

December 3, 2025

indiantelevision.com Team

INDIA: SpotDraft has strengthened its senior ranks as it gears up for faster global expansion, naming Alon Waks as chief marketing officer and Amit Sharma as chief financial officer. The appointments follow the firm’s $54 million Series B round earlier this year and mark a push to scale across the Americas, EMEA and India.

The AI-powered contract-lifecycle-management platform has posted 100 per cent year-on-year growth in customer acquisition, counting Apollo.io, IPSY, Mixpanel, Oyster and Panasonic among its global clients. The firm processes more than one million contracts annually, with volumes up 173 per cent and nearly 50,000 monthly active users.

Waks, a veteran of Kustomer, Bizzabo, CreatorIQ, LivePerson and ZoomInfo, will steer global marketing and category positioning as legal teams adopt AI-driven tools. Sharma, who has led finance across scaling tech firms since 2016, will guide financial strategy, investor relations and market expansion.

Both hires aim to sharpen SpotDraft’s bid for a larger slice of the fast-growing legal-tech market, expected to exceed $63 billion by 2032. Co-founder and chief executive Shashank Bijapur said the company is focused on scaling go-to-market operations in the Americas, deepening leadership in EMEA, and accelerating AI capabilities for general counsels and legal-operations leaders.

Clients report shorter deal cycles and better alignment between legal and business teams. “What used to take weeks now happens in days,” said Abnormal Security senior legal operations manager Susan Koenig. DeepL head of legal operations André Barrow, said SpotDraft has helped reframe legal “from a cost centre to a generator of revenue”.

Executive Dossier

Outdoor Ads Get Smarter as LOC8 Shifts OOH from Visibility to Attention

Published

3 months ago

November 28, 2025

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: Out-of-home ads were once the wallflowers of marketing seen by everyone, noticed by few. But in an age where attention has become the world’s most fought-over currency, even billboards are getting a brain upgrade. Enter LOC8, OSMO’s AI-powered attention engine, quietly reshaping the old OOH playbook by measuring not just who could have looked at an ad, but who actually did. The shift is subtle but seismic: impressions are out, impact is in and data, not gut instinct, is calling the shots.

In a landscape where marketers question every rupee spent outdoors, LOC8 is turning lampposts, flyovers and traffic islands into precision-mapped attention laboratories. By crunching dwell time, visibility zones, perceptual size and real-world obstructions, the platform is dragging OOH into a future where creativity meets computer vision and where the best ideas aren’t just eye-catching, but eye-measured. From automotive facelifts to FMCG novelty and real estate trust-building, the message is clear, outdoor has stopped shouting and started listening. Indian Television Dot Com explores more about it in an Interview interview with OSMO co-founder Nipun Arora.

On how OSMO is shifting outdoor advertising from a visibility-led medium to an attention-led one through LOC8.

Traditional OOH has long been measured by visibility and impressions i.e how many people could see an ad. OSMO, through its proprietary AI platform LOC8, is shifting that narrative more towards likelihood of being noticed. Using computer vision and machine learning, LOC8 analyzes real-world video data to measure visibility zones, obstructions, dwell time and perceptual size; bringing precision to how attention is quantified outdoors. It moves the focus from mere impressions to quality of impressions, making OOH a data-verified, attention-led medium comparable to digital in accountability.

On how marketers can use LOC8’s dwell-time, visibility and perception insights to craft more effective, emotionally resonant OOH campaigns.

LOC8 helps brands understand how people truly experience outdoor media how long they look, from what distance, and under what conditions. By quantifying dwell time, visibility duration, and perceptual size; marketers can plan campaigns that align with real human viewing behavior. This empowers creative and strategy teams to design emotionally resonant storytelling where messaging, visual hierarchy and placement are optimized for how people actually notice and process OOH creatives.

About what LOC8 has revealed through campaigns like Renault Triber and Namaste India on how categories such as auto, FMCG and real estate use attention metrics to drive outcomes.

Each category uses attention data differently but all share one common goal: to convert outdoor visibility into measurable engagement.

• Automotive | Renault Triber

For the new Renault Triber facelift, bold creative met data-led planning through LOC8. By analyzing on-ground video data, LOC8 measured real audience attention across placements factoring in visibility zones, obstructions, traffic speed and perceptual size. This enabled Renault to identify corridors that delivered maximum reach, saliency and engagement, optimizing media efficiency and ROI.

• FMCG | Namaste India

In OOH, innovation is the hook and assets are the bait. But bait often hides the hook. With Loc8’s attention metrics, we ensured the bait wasn’t a hurdle, rather it became the perfect stage for innovation to deliver its full impact! The insight proved that creative novelty, when validated by attention data, drives deeper engagement and measurable brand lift.

• Real Estate

For luxury and real estate campaigns targeting HNI/UHNI audiences, attention patterns differ especially between front and rear passengers, who are often the core audience segment for premium sites. LOC8’s ability to distinguish rear vs. front visibility plays a critical role here. It helps identify sites that offer longer viewing windows and stronger perceptual dominance from the rear seat where decision-makers are most likely seated making it a key differentiator for premium and trust-led categories. Together, these insights prove that auto optimizes for impact, FMCG for recall, and real estate for trust visibility showing how attention metrics adapt to category goals while ensuring measurable outcomes.

On how attention analytics will shape the future of brand storytelling and media planning as OOH becomes more digitised and data-driven.

As outdoor digitizes, attention analytics will inform not just where to advertise but how stories are told in public spaces. This evolution transforms OOH from a static broadcast channel into a dynamic attention ecosystem, where creativity is optimized through evidence-based insight.

On how LOC8’s data-led framework helps marketers quantify OOH impact and make outdoor a more accountable, ROI-driven medium.

LOC8 bridges the gap between intuition and evidence. By quantifying metrics like visibility duration, attention opportunity index, and visual saliency rank, it allows brands to benchmark site performance and justify investment. This data-led approach brings transparency, comparability and ROI measurement to a medium historically driven by perception.

On how OSMO ensures AI and computer vision enhance creativity rather than reduce it to numbers.

OSMO believes that technology should enhance creativity, not overshadow it. LOC8’s attention models reveal what naturally draws the human eye helping creative teams refine design cues, contrast, and visual hierarchy for greater impact. By merging art and science, LOC8 empowers creativity with intelligence.

About the creative best practices and design cues LOC8 has uncovered regarding what truly captures consumer attention outdoors.

LOC8’s visual cognition analysis has surfaced clear patterns across campaigns:

• High contrast and minimal messaging outperform cluttered designs.

• Motion cues draw significantly longer dwell times.

• The first two seconds are critical, creatives must establish focus instantly.

• Contextual alignment between the creative and its environment increases attention by over 30%.

These learnings offer a scientific foundation for creative effectiveness helping brands design OOH that’s visually magnetic and emotionally memorable.

On how attention metrics will integrate into omnichannel planning where OOH, digital and social work together for unified brand impact.

Attention can become the unifying KPI across OOH, digital and social to creates seamless storytelling continuity, where outdoor triggers digital engagement. The future of omnichannel planning lies in attention-led integration ensuring that campaigns don’t just reach audiences everywhere but truly capture and hold their focus.