Screwvala’s initiatives

An interest in entrepreneurship and sports has led businessman turned philanthropist Ronnie Screwvala to invest in and promote two diverse initiatives. The former UTV founder is to launch UpGrad, an online education venture that will offer courses in entrepreneurship, data analytics and digital business management as well as promote the popular sport of kabbadi. UpGrad also proposes to deliver conventional courses in management and law in the future.
Some "200,000-300,000 new jobs will be created in big data and digital business space over the next 24 months,” said Screwvala, in a report in The Economic Times (ET) dated July 24, 2015. UpGrad is targeting 500-800 students in the next one year, which it expects to ramp up over five times by the second year, the report reveals. Screwvala plans to personally invest Rs 100 crores in the project over the next two years.

Ronnie Screwvala

U Mumba in action

In an email response to Parsiana’s queries, Screwvala commented that "education today is no longer a pursuit of a degree and now, more than ever, the need to learn (not just study) is imperative to move ahead in this very competitive and dynamic world.” Co-founder of UpGrad, Mayank Kumar, who has 10 years of experience in operations, investment and consulting in the education sector stated, as per the ET report, that the target audience of the initiative will be "working executives with three to seven years of experience looking to move up in their career.”
The new venture aims at filling the gap between skills requirement in the industry through these courses which will be a combination of case studies, video lectures and lessons on applying the learning to real life problems. The courses will include lectures from top internet entrepreneurs in the country. E-retailer Snapdeal’s co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, local search major Just Dial’s V. S. S. Mani, and online travel agent MakeMyTrip’s Deep Kalra will serve as faculty, ET notes. There will be an adviser for each student, thereby bringing "credibility and rigor to online courses.”
"Get ambitious, as India’s future is linked with your aspirations too,” is Screwvala’s concluding exhortation in his email to Parsiana.
Regarding his second initiative, Screwvala, who owns the Pro Kabaddi League Bombay team U Mumba, explains, "It (kabaddi) is a popular sport. Now, we want to make it into an aspirational one, give it some stature.” He aims to achieve this with an array of properties featuring the sport — mobile games, a television and an animation series, and also a movie, ET reported on August 11, 2015.
ET writes that "kabaddi has seen a decent beginning in its first year (2014), attracting over 435 million television viewers. In its second edition, it has seen 61% higher viewership in the first 26 games against the same period last year.” U Mumba, which also runs an incubation program called U Mumba Future Stars, offers kabaddi players in the age group of 18 to 22 a platform to demonstrate their talent. The U Mumba team won 2015’s Pro Kabaddi League trumping Bengaluru Bulls by six points.
The mobile game, it is reported, will be built for all platforms and "will seek to initially build brands out of some recognizable U Mumba players.” Later, as the game grows, Screwvala plans to integrate other kabaddi teams as well. For the animation series, this former media magnate is looking at a young underdog story, where characters from the U Mumba team will guide the protagonist. The TV series is likely to feature players from three different states whose lives become intertwined, thanks to the game. Pointing out that scriptwriters are right now understanding the back story of kabaddi players, Screwvala is reported to have stated that for any game to arrive, you "want to have a big screen attachment to it.”