Shark Tank India Season 3 is getting bigger and better. The show, which will start streaming on SonyLIV from January next year, has added six new sharks for the upcoming season. This will take the total count of sharks in Shark Tank India Season 3 to twelve with six returning sharks - Peyush Gupta, Anupam Mittal, Vinita Singh, Namita Thapar, Amit Jain, and Aman Gupta.
After Ritesh Agarwal, Varun Dua, Deepinder Goyal, Azhar Iqubal, and Radhika Gupta, the latest shark to join the business reality show is the serial entreprenuer Ronnie Screwvala and the richest Bollywood producer with net worth of over Rs 12,800 crore. His name was announced on the social media handles of Shark Tank India on Saturday.
Everything you need to know about Ronnie Screwvala
In the early 1980s, Screwvala set up Lazer Brushes, which went on to become the largest toothbrush manufacturing company in the country. In 1981, he launched a cable television service called Network in which he installed video machines in the basements of Mumbai’s high-rise buildings.
In 1990, Screwvala started UTV as a TV production company with Rs 37,500. In the subseqeunt years, the company became UTV Software Communications - one of the biggest media conglomerates. The maximum revenues came from its film production unit, UTV Motion Pictures. The film studio bankrolled multiple commercially and critically acclaimed films like Rang De Basanti, Swades, Khosla Ka Ghosla, A Wednesday, and Haider.
In 2012, the global entertainment giant Walt Disney acquired UTV for a whopping sum of $454 million turning it into Disney UTV. Ronnie Screwvala divested his whole stake of 23 percent and left the company two years later in 2014 and the brand UTV was shut down in 2022.
Presently, Ronnie Screwvala is one of the co-founders and chairperson of the edtech company upGrad, which is valued at $2.25 billion. He runs a private equity firm Unilazer Ventures through which he invests in multiple startups, and owns a sports business company USports and a not-for-profit Swades Foundation.
In 2014, Ronnie re-entered the film production business with RSVP Movies, which has produced critically acclaimed films such as Karwaan, Sonchiriya, Raat Akeli Hai, Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota, and The Sky Is Pink. RSVP Movies' highest-grossing film has been Vicky Kaushal-starrer Uri: The Surgical Strike, which minted over Rs 350 crore worldwide.
Screwvala has been named on Esquire's list of the 75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century and was also ranked 78 on Time 100, which lists the 100 most influential people in the world, in 2009. His present net worth is Rs 12,800 crore, as per Hurun India Rich List 2022.
