Ronnie Screwvala: The cable guy

9:09Zing Tsjeng:Toothbrushes? Why toothbrushes? Well, it all started after a trip to London to learn more about TV presenting. His father happened to be there at the same time, visiting a hair and toothbrush factory for work. Ronnie decided to join him.

9:21Simon Jack:And in the factory, Ronnie sees what he thinks is two brand new toothbrush making machines waiting to be installed. But he's told they're headed for scrap because they've been making millions of toothbrushes for two to three years. But when he asks, he's told the machines actually have a lifespan of 10 or 20 years. He realises in the UK, machines were considered old before they'd even been broken in. Back home, they'd be cutting edge technology.

9:45Zing Tsjeng:Now, at that point, less than 15 % of the Indian population used toothbrushes. most people used Ayurvedic tree barks. Ronnie instantly recognises the growth potential for a simple product in a huge untapped market. And despite his age and lack of experience, he manages to get funding because the banks in those days had quotas to lend money which had to be dispersed to small and medium scale manufacturing to get that sector going.

10:12Simon Jack:So Ronnie founded Laser Brushes and in its first year it produced about half a million toothbrushes. Over the next eight years, it grew to producing 50 million a year. Ronnie built that company into the largest suppliers of toothbrushes in the country. And he ran it for two decades until he sold it in 2004.

10:31Zing Tsjeng:Wow. So there are two stories in one here for sure. But we're not doing him because he's a toothbrush mogul and he didn't see himself going into a factory every day of his life. But the toothbrushes gave him capital and cash flow, which allowed him to pursue something more creative because Ronnie wanted to make money from the arts instead of it just being a hobby.

10:48Simon Jack:There are probably quite a few people in the arts who are still not quite making enough money from the arts. But, you know, in the 1980s, this was a different time for India. It was pre-liberalisation. The media was still a very nascent industry. TV sets were sold without the remote control, so you had to go right up to the set and press the buttons.

11:05Zing Tsjeng:I'm old enough to remember doing that.

11:07Simon Jack:I vaguely remember this. No, you don't. I must have. No, no, I actually do. There was a power button on the front.

11:14Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, obviously.

11:15Simon Jack:That's it.

11:17Zing Tsjeng:Of course, it's about where's it going to be on the back?

11:19Simon Jack:On the remote control.

11:20Zing Tsjeng:Oh, but you don't remember twisting a dial to get the three channels. Well, this was in the UK anyway. You were in Singapore at the time.

11:26Simon Jack:I don't know. No dials for me. The generation gap strikes again.

11:31Zing Tsjeng:Painfully in my case.

11:32Simon Jack:Well, the TV sets, like we said, were without remote control. And there was the single terrestrial black and white channel Dohder Shan controlled by the government. Some news was selective. Entertainment options were sparse. But on trips abroad, Ronnie had seen the potential of cable TV, offering multiple choices, which to me, he says, sounded like such a brilliant idea.

11:52Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, Ronnie's 25 at this point. He's just about to marry his first wife, Manjula, with whom he would have a baby. Now, Manjula's father owned a successful audiovisual company and he encouraged Ronnie's entrepreneurism and more importantly, he funded it. So in 1981, Ronnie founded his own cable TV company called Network. In the UK, we don't tend to use the word cable TV, it just means TV channels delivered via cables rather than a broadcast signal and typically offers more options than TVs with antenna.

12:22Simon Jack:So Ronnie went door to door around high-rise towers in his area trying to convince residents to let him set up cable television. He had a lot of doors slammed in his face and he realised that 9 out of 10 customers were more worried about how the cable would affect their interior decorating. So he said, we became interior decorators more than cable operators for the first year. So to make sure the wiring in their homes would remain unobtrusive.

12:46Zing Tsjeng:That sounds very much like my other half. No wiring on display, please. So he was like one of the original cable guys. Yeah, literally the cable guy. The cable guy. Now, I love this because over the next four years, he expanded to supply these cable TV to dozens of apartment blocks. But the laws in that time in India were restrictive. He couldn't dig up a road, for example, to connect the buildings. Instead, buildings had a control room in their basement with a technician who would play programmes on video cassettes like VHS. And these tapes were delivered on foot from one building to the next.

13:19Zing Tsjeng:And there would be noticeable gaps between shows while the technician literally ejected one cassette and put the next one in.

13:25Simon Jack:Wow, talk about analogue. You think about cables being this new frontier of technology, but there's just some guy in a basement.

13:31Zing Tsjeng:I love this scene somehow. There's a guy in the basement. Hold on, everyone. In goes the next tape.

13:37Simon Jack:Yeah. Passing video cassettes out the window to the next guy. Well, TV schedules weren't even consistent. They were created for each building on a sheet of paper with shows beginning at 7pm and ending at 12.30am. And Ronnie met with residents regularly to assess their viewing preferences and what they like to watch. They liked comedies, murder mysteries, cartoons, American shows like Dallas, Dynasty, Star Trek. And when you think about what was going on in India at the time, you know, black and white state television. God, imagine watching Dallas for the first time.

14:08Zing Tsjeng:I also imagine that these discussions about what people liked could be probably pretty fractious affairs. Like some people would say, oh, I like this and I like that. And you'd have this kind of massive argument about which tapes are we going to get next week?

14:19Simon Jack:Yeah. Imagine, you know, rather than just arguing with whoever's in your living room, you're arguing with the entire block of people who live in your apartment.

14:26Zing Tsjeng:Yeah. There were some shortcuts taken, I think, though. According to a technician at the company, there were no rights purchased for networks programming, although Ronnie's never commented on this publicly. Ronnie charged 200 rupees a month for a network connection. That's around 20 US dollars then. But he knew because of the restrictive cable laws, his current business model wasn't scalable. You can't grow it quickly. And soon he had some competitors, some of whom were charging 40 % less than he was.

14:51Simon Jack:He said, I needed to exit it because I just thought if I can't grow it at a particular trot, what's the point? We would have still grown at about 20 to 30 percent, but that was not something that was exciting. So by the late 1980s, he sold the company and it struggled under new management.

15:07Zing Tsjeng:It's interesting. 20 to 30 percent growth for most people would be seen as incredibly exciting kind of levels of growth. And I think that's one of the things about entrepreneurs. They think big, quick. I want 100 percent. They want scale. They want scale quickly. So what next for him? He gets a call from an old friend from his theatre days. Remember Aliq Padamse? Well, as well as a director, Alik was the head of one of the top ad agencies in the country. He had been asked by Unilever, big multinational food and consumer goods company, to do a quiz show on state channel Dordeshan, and he wanted Ronnie to produce and direct it.

15:42Zing Tsjeng:And Ronnie thought, wow, this sounds like a business. Someone's paying me to create a television show.

15:46Simon Jack:So in 1990, Ronnie created a production company with 37 ,500 rupees, which was over 2 ,000 US dollars at the time. He called it United Television Software Communications Limited, or UTV, named because he wanted something that sounded corporate. Ronnie didn't launch UTV alone, though. He did it with a woman called Zarina Mehta. She was a friend of Ali's wife who worked on Ronnie's TV show. And by this point, Ronnie was divorced. He and Zarina began a relationship and then mixed business with pleasure when they launched UTV.

16:17Zing Tsjeng:Now, to begin with, UTV focused on producing TV shows for the only channel around, Dordeshan along with some advertising films. But a year after founding UTV, the Indian government launched major economic liberalisation reforms. And this ended what was called the Licence Raj, which was, you know, harking back to colonial days, the strict government control over the economy. It deregulated industries, it opened India up to foreign investment. This was a very big moment. And this would have been after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. So India, with its enormous was population beginning to open up.

16:51Simon Jack:Huge economic opportunities. And, you know, that applied to loads of different industries, including the media. So satellite TV was allowed into India for the first time. There were new privately owned channels. Foreign players entered, like the good old BBC. Good old BBC. There was also a huge advertising boom because multinational brands entered India and that meant TV advertising exploded. Audiences became consumers that you could sell to.

17:15Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, and also probably one of the, I mean, it is the most populous country in the world right now and has had one of the fastest growing middle class, I guess. And that must have been irresistible to all sorts of companies. Ronnie, though, has sometimes downplayed the impacts of India's liberalisation, saying in the 90s, I don't think the environment was enough to make anyone ambitious and aspirational. It was actually a bit of a downer, he says. But UTV quickly won a contract on the new Indian channel ZTV of 520 episodes a year across 10 different shows. And they even launched India's first daily soap opera called Shanti.

17:51Simon Jack:So in the early 90s, UTV is busy. And as a boss, Ronnie's been described as meticulous and omnipresent. He demanded his employees stay late, but he was the hardest worker there. This is quite a familiar story you'll know from other billionaires who like to stay later than their latest employee.

18:06Zing Tsjeng:Sleep on the floor, Elon Musk style.

18:08Simon Jack:Exactly. And unlike most Indian media bosses at the time, he didn't require deference from employees. He set tight budgets. He ploughed revenues back into the company to expand. And most crucially, as you can tell from the way he spoke about the 90s, he had an insatiable appetite for growth.

18:25Zing Tsjeng:Yes, UTV started making in-flight entertainment programmes for Indian Airlines, which were opening up. They opened a dubbing studio. Dubbing proved pretty lucrative in a country with 22 official languages, especially when Disney contracted them to dub its library into Indian languages. And by the way, Disney will make another entry into this story. They got into something called syndication. That's where you acquire foreign programmes from outside producers to sell to channels. And Ronnie was also contracted by Dordashan to sell the channels commercial airtime to advertisers.

18:58Simon Jack:So Ronnie's diversifying his business. But at this point, UTV is still just a small team in a basement office with no actual meeting room. So set the scene and enter stage left, stage right. I think you'd prefer right. OK, so enter stage right, another one of our billionaires, Rupert Murdoch. By 1995, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp owned major American broadcast network Fox. And he was in the process of buying the Indian channel Star TV, an English language entertainment channel. By the way, you can listen to our episode on Rupert Murdoch to find out why India was becoming such a big market for him at the time.

19:33Zing Tsjeng:So media titan Murdoch comes to India and meets Ronnie in his small basement office. and Ronnie describes the meeting as no coffee, no tea, just straight talk, with Murdoch thumping the table to drive home his points. Murdoch then invites Ronnie to the News Corp London offices a few weeks later. Ronnie goes alone, unaware he's about to be greeted, ambushed maybe, by a seven-person team ready to close a deal.

19:57Simon Jack:The News Corp team are shocked he doesn't have a lawyer or banker with him, but Ronnie decides to press ahead, closing the deal after just a day of negotiations, which he describes as like standing in an auditorium full of people with all eyes drilling into you. News Corp buys 49 % of UTV for$5 million, making it the first ever foreign investment in media in India.

20:19Zing Tsjeng:But Ronnie still owned 51%, so he's retained majority ownership and operating control. So if Murdoch bought 49 % for$5 million, then Ronnie's 51 % is clearly worth a little bit more than that. so we can say with some confidence that Ronnie is a millionaire in 1995, just before he turns the age of 40.

20:36Simon Jack:And that evening, Ronnie took a walk around Soho in the cold air to celebrate and was promptly mugged by two of the biggest blokes I've ever seen, in his words. Back at the hotel, he called Zarina, who told him, you got something today and you gave some back. Good karma. That's a good way of spinning a robbery. That's a good way of looking at it.

21:25Ronnie Screwvala:We'll see you next time. This is The Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work and your politics, your everyday life.

21:46Zing Tsjeng:And all the bizarre ways people are using the internet.

21:49Ronnie Screwvala:Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

22:00Zing Tsjeng:OK, so he's a millionaire. Let's now take Ronnie Scruvala from a million to a billion. Ronnie no longer just wanted to make content for other channels. He wanted to own the channel. And we've seen this so many times, haven't we? Oprah owning her own studio, Rihanna owning her own beauty brand. That's where the big money is.

22:16Simon Jack:In the words of Karl Marks, the means of production.

22:18Zing Tsjeng:Yes, right. And so just before the millennium, Ronnie bought the Tamil language channel VJTV, using funding from some American private investors who bought out News Corp's share of UTV.

22:30Simon Jack:UTV partnered with Star TV for a 50-50 joint venture to run VJTV. Star handled distribution, programming and ads, but it needed UTV as there were still restrictions on how much TV foreign companies could control. Together, they expanded the channel across four South Indian languages. And in 2004, Star bought out UTV stake for just under 7 million at the time.

22:53Zing Tsjeng:So Ronnie has exited now. He's got some money, he's got some capital, he's got some hands-on broadcast experience. It's also, by the way, this year, 2004, that he sold his toothbrush company, if you remember that from earlier. His focus now shifted to launching UTV's own channel, starting with some niche audiences.

23:10Simon Jack:India already had multiple kids' channels, so you'd think a crowded market. But they were foreign channels, like, for instance, Cartoon Network. Zarina, who is by now Ronnie's wife, pushed for a kids channel made specifically for Indian children. So in 2004, UTV launched Hungama TV.

23:27Zing Tsjeng:At first, Hungama leaned pretty heavily on Japanese animation, especially Doraemon, a robotic cat that travels back in time from the 22nd century.

23:36Simon Jack:Yes, I actually watched quite a lot of Doraemon when I was growing up in Singapore. It was massive, not just in India, but across all of Asia because it could be so easily dubbed over in the language. It was among one of the many reasons why shows like Mr Bean got so popular in places like Singapore, because it's all essentially wordless and could be dubbed. So you don't really need to understand the language.

23:58Zing Tsjeng:My equivalent of that was there was a French show, which ended up being called The Magic Roundabout in the UK. Anyway, so Doraemon became a cultural phenomenon in India and wider from what you're telling me, Zing. So two decades later, it's watched by 480 million people in India alone, and that included adults and children.

24:15Simon Jack:You know, if there's any artists listening to this episode wondering how it is they can become a millionaire or a billionaire, make a cartoon that can be easily dubbed into any language around the world.

24:24Zing Tsjeng:I'm sure AI is working on that as we speak.

24:27Simon Jack:Yeah, you're actually absolutely right. Well, at the time, Ronnie was also getting into film, not just children's television. He'd been a film distributor since the mid-1990s, meaning that he's the person responsible for getting a finished film into theatres. But Ronnie described the first film that UTV made as a perfect storm of questionable movie making, one that traded on every Bollywood stereotype under the sun. He actually refused to watch it in a theatre. Instead, he had a system built in his bedroom so he could, in his words, watch and cringe alone.

24:58Zing Tsjeng:I feel like way about looking at some of my stuff sometimes, you know, on TV.

25:02Simon Jack:Oh, never, Siren. Come on. You've got the show real. Watch and cringe alone. Well, from what he's kind of put down in words, you can kind of tell he's a man with a bit of a sense of humour about himself.

25:10Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, for sure.

25:10Simon Jack:He is definitely more charming than your average billionaire.

25:13Zing Tsjeng:He was probably less happy. It probably lost a bit of his sense of humour about how the film actually did though, right?

25:18Simon Jack:Yeah, it lost 100 million rupees, which was at the time$2 million.

25:23Zing Tsjeng:Big money. He viewed himself as a Bollywood outsider. In his autobiography, Dream With Your Eyes Open, An Entrepreneurial Journey, he remembers an incident at Cannes, the famous film festival in 2002. He and Zarina couldn't have been any further from the VIP section, in their words. And when he waved at a prominent Bollywood director, he was blanked, although the director in question later told him he did wave back. Ronnie just didn't see.

25:46Simon Jack:But being outside the traditional Bollywood system meant Ronnie felt he could do things a little differently. In India, all the producers, whether big or small, were independent until the government granted Indian cinema official industry status in 2001. At this point, Ronnie set about turning UTV into a Hollywood style studio. and that meant creating a one-stop shop for financing, producing, distributing and marketing their own films.

26:10Zing Tsjeng:So UTV was right at the forefront of the Indian new wave with more emphasis on linear scripts, realistic drama instead of songs and dance. They released multiple films a year with growing critical and commercial success.

26:24Simon Jack:But success breeds contempt and some people in the industry weren't happy. A film writer is quoted as saying UTV wanted to muscle their way into the business. They don't talk movies and they don't behave like movie people.

26:36Zing Tsjeng:Another one said, basically UTV understood that they were in a jungle and behaved exactly like that. When Ronnie has been asked about criticism from independent producers and creatives against the more business-focused studio model, he said, if one were to tally up the track record of these creative entities, in inverted commas, it would not be rosy at all. If you want to make a passion project, pay for it yourself. And before you make a sweeping statement, fix your own creative accountability.

27:01Simon Jack:Ouch, talk about a burn. In 2005, Ronnie decided it was time to take his company public, like many of our billionaires, to raise money to expand the business even further. And UTV Software Communications listed on India's Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange. The IPO was oversubscribed, raising about$20 million, with the company value being around$55 million. So it went well.

27:25Zing Tsjeng:Yeah. And that's when you really announce yourself as a corporate entity to the world, when you sort of list your shares on a big exchange. That's your red carpet premier.

27:31Simon Jack:Exactly.

27:32Zing Tsjeng:And it was at this point another huge media conglomerate took notice, Disney. If you remember, UTV had been dubbing Disney's content since the 1990s. In 2003, Disney had set up its own Indian operation, wanting to get into this, as we've discussed, vast and developing and growing market.

27:49Simon Jack:Disney had launched two children's channels, but they struggled behind Ronnie's channel Hungama. The reason was because Disney was making decisions from their headquarters in California. So they didn't fully understand the cultural or demographic markets. So Disney cold called Ronnie asking to buy Hungarma and his response was, absolutely not. We spent a lot of time doing this and we have a large broadcasting agenda.

28:11Zing Tsjeng:But Disney was persistent. In 2006, Ronnie flew to America to meet the chairman of Walt Disney International, Andy Byrd. Andy was very persuasive and he offered a sweetener. Disney would buy Hungarma, but also a stake in UTV.

28:26Simon Jack:UTV's management were against the deal. They were worried about how much control Disney would assert. But Ronnie wanted it to happen. He wanted the cash to fund expansion, which he considered more important than complete control of the company.

28:38Zing Tsjeng:But Disney bought Hungarma anyway for$30 million, less than two years after the channel was launched, and bought a 15 % stake in UTV. Two years later, Disney increased this to 60 % with an investment of about$200 million. I think that his colleagues' nervousness about Disney, you know, the creeping control of Disney was probably pretty well placed. I think most people who've gone into business with Disney find that, you know, when you get into bed with the mouse, the mouse takes over.

29:06Simon Jack:Yeah. When you enter the house of mouse, they don't play around. Well, with the money from these deals, Ronnie expanded UTV rapidly over the next few years. So it worked out for him, at least from what he wanted to do from it. They launched more TV channels, including UTV World Movies, UTV Action, the youth-focused Bindas, which beat MTV as India's number one channel for 18 to 25-year-olds.

29:32Zing Tsjeng:Ronnie's movie division was also doing pretty well. Three films were India's official Oscar entry, and they won 25 national awards. That's 10 times more than anyone else. and they also began dipping their toe into the Western market. For example, partnering with Hollywood to finance half of M. Night Shyamalan's film The Happening.

29:50Simon Jack:And then he diversified even further, launching a new vertical in a burgeoning market, mobile gaming. Now, this might sound kind of random, but I think it makes sense, right? You just want to kind of have as many fingers and as many pies to cover your bases.

30:04Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, but Ronnie said some people view the diversity of this portfolio as portraying a lack of focus. And he said, no one understands the conglomerate model in India or frankly, in Asia.

30:16Simon Jack:And actually, by 2011, Walt Disney India was not doing particularly well, was it?

30:21Zing Tsjeng:Right. No. In fact, it was recording big losses. They just hadn't managed to capture the Indian market with their American brands. So instead, Disney decided to buy UTV outright.

30:31Simon Jack:So Disney bought out Ronnie in all the public shares, taking the company private by delisting from the stock exchange. That cost Disney around 450 million. And that was their largest ever acquisition outside of the US at that point. And this meant that Disney valued UTV at almost a billion dollars. UTV became the Walt Disney Company India.

30:51Zing Tsjeng:But the deal got Disney a big footprint in one of the fastest growing economies. But one media analyst had a very interesting thought on why Disney spent so big on UTV. And their conclusion was they bought Ronnie. Wow.

31:05Simon Jack:Ronnie personally did quite well out of that deal for himself. He made about$150 million and he also retained much of his own control. He became managing director at Disney's India Operations, ousting the previous head. And he immediately made some changes, including appointing former UTV executives to lead Disney's film and broadcasting divisions.

31:25Zing Tsjeng:after two years leading this transition Ronnie stepped down as managing director at Disney at this point he's 58 he's rich beyond most people's wildest dreams but as we've seen Ronnie is a man with an entrepreneurial drive we discussed this before we'd be out by now exactly long out by then he took a 10 day vacation to New Zealand his longest break that decade and there he decided what to do for his second act or third if you count the toothbrushes of course start building businesses again from scratch although he's starting not from scratch, is he? He's got a little bit more money in his back pocket than before.

31:59Simon Jack:No, and he's got a 10-day rest as well. A 10-day holiday in a decade. And a pile of cash.

32:03Zing Tsjeng:You're ready for anything.

32:04Simon Jack:I don't know. I mean, would I swap that amount of money for holidays that lasted more than 10 days? Probably not, but I'm never going to be offered that amount of money. So, moot point. So, over the past decade, Ronnie has diversified into film production, private equity, sports, education. He's got the private equity firm Unilaser Ventures. Remember, his toothbrush company was called Laser. There's a film production company, RSVP Movies, which has produced over 40 titles, including an Emmy-nominated film. It's also made India's first ever Netflix original, which is a really big deal.

32:36Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, he's got into sports as well, founding a sports business called YouSports, which has teams in Kabaddi, volleyball and table tennis. He started a non-profit with his wife Serena called the Swades Foundation with the mission to lift one million rural Indians out of poverty every five years.

32:50Simon Jack:But by far the most profitable among his ventures is an online higher education platform he co-founded in 2015 called Upgrad. Now, India, as you've talked about before, is booming, one of the world's largest and youngest populations. There's widespread smartphone use. So there's been rapid growth in ed tech, which is a sector called education technology. By 2020, Upgrad had a million registered users. And a year later, it became what's known as a unicorn. on when you raise funds that value the startup at over$1 billion.

33:21Zing Tsjeng:Yeah. Now, EdTech is a really burgeoning market. And over the past few years, he's been acquiring smaller EdTech companies, bringing them under the Upgrad umbrella. In 2025, Upgrad reported$1.8 million of profit. Significant turnaround from the year before where they reported over$30 million in losses, probably because they're investing to start it up. In the early years of a company, you tend to lose money because you're basically plowing it all in. So it looks like they've turned cash flow positive in 2025. And it was that year, 2025, last year, that Forbes first listed Ronnie as a billionaire worth$1.5 billion.

33:59Zing Tsjeng:Largely, I would say, in part probably because of the EdTech valuation. And despite all his adventures in film, I've got a feeling that's going to provide the majority of his wealth in years to come.

34:20Simon Jack:So let's bring Ronnie's story up to date, because not much has changed since 2025. He's still worth 1.5 billion. Last year, there was speculation that Ronnie was going to acquire one of the other big EdTech unicorns, their rival Unacademy. However, as of early 2026, it was reported the deal was called off over valuation differences. Ronnie said, it's fair to say that we were unable to arrive at a mutually agreeable valuation.

34:46Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, but let's watch this space on that one. But there is one thing Ronnie's mum wishes he would do, saying, now that you've done all of this, why don't you go back to theatre? I wish you'd never left.

34:56Simon Jack:I would pay good money to see him in Death of a Salesman. Yeah. So now it's time to score Ronnie on our billionaire categories. We've got wealth, controversy, philanthropy, power and legacy. And this is a fun bit of the podcast where we score someone from zero out of 10.

35:11Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, we start with wealth. He lives in the same elite Mumbai neighbourhood where he grew up. Spending seems to be what you would maybe describe as quiet, luxury.

35:22Simon Jack:Nowhere in the same leagues as another Indian billionaire, Ambani, who has literally built a skyscraper for his family to live in.

35:29Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, Ambani, to be fair, has got quite a lot more money than Ronnie. We often look at how far they've come. It's not exactly Silver Spoon, but he's not coming from the wrong side of the tracks, is he?

35:39Simon Jack:Yeah, his family was, I guess you'd call it upwardly mobile.

35:42Zing Tsjeng:Okay, and also at 1.5 billion, he has crept into the billionaire category. So for sheer wealth and distance travel, I'm going to give him, for now, a two.

35:53Simon Jack:I think a two is generous. I feel like maybe a one. Okay, all right. Harsh, harsh. Harsh, but maybe I'm feeling in a harsh mood today.

36:00Zing Tsjeng:Okay. Controversy. you know we have some very controversial characters on this pod with him I don't think you know slimmer pickings I would say.

36:08Simon Jack:Yeah it's actually noticeably hard to find much negative things that have been said about Ronnie online but he also seems to go to quite a great length to appear quite grounded and normal.

36:18Zing Tsjeng:Yeah the only major thing we could find was in 2019 Ronnie got in a high-profile legal fight with India's major multiplex cinema chains after accusing them of colluding to impose unfair screening fees on producers. And he took that matter to the Competition Commission of India. The Competition Commission ultimately dismissed Ronnie's complaint against the major multiplex chain, saying there was no evidence of cartelisation or an arrangement between the multiplexes that violated competition law. But all of this seems to be, to me, this is just normal course of business kind of spat.

36:52Simon Jack:Yeah, exactly. And when you think about the spats that take place in show business, I feel like this doesn't even quite register on that level.

36:59Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, so I'm going to give him a one for controversy.

37:02Simon Jack:Yeah, I think a one for controversy. A good score to get into controversy category, to be fair.

37:07Zing Tsjeng:Philanthropy, how much are they giving back? While they were still running UTV, Ronnie and Zarina set up a creche and an old age home within their office.

37:15Simon Jack:That must have made for an interesting away day. Well, after the Disney sale, he did make the Swedes Foundation a really big priority. That's the charity, remember, with admission to lift a million rural Indians out of poverty every five years. And between 2023 and 2024, it provided 20 ,000 cataract surgeries, constructed 30 ,000 toilets, granted 7 ,000 scholarships, scaled up 7 ,500 youth and more. So, you know, they are doing things.

37:43Zing Tsjeng:That's pretty good. Perhaps maybe not in the right section, but following a comment from a previous listener, Ronnie is a dog lover and has a golden Labrador called Sprite. We did a little tally didn't we how many of our billionaires are dog owners or dog lovers yes exactly and to be

37:58Simon Jack:fair we haven't found a single cat lover amongst them really i don't think so where is blofeld when you need him getting another one of those perfect little persian felines i'm sure um so on

38:09Zing Tsjeng:philanthropy i think he scores pretty highly i mean that sounds like real stuff you know that's not given into some shadowy kind of foundation foundation where no one really knows what goes on that seems like real work so i'm going to give him a solid five for philanthropy so far yeah i think plus he's only got a billion 1.5 billion i say only it's a crazy amount of money but

38:29Simon Jack:by our standards that's not that much exactly and he does seem to be trying to do some good with it

38:33Zing Tsjeng:so five out of ten for me too okay and then power and legacy um this is you know will they be remembered for a long time do they have the power to pick up the phone to a head of state I mean, I think probably, you know, a big force in modern Indian media introduced cable TV, first daily soap opera, a beloved kids cartoon that even you've seen.

38:55Simon Jack:Exactly. I mean, in 2008, Esquire named him among the 75 most influential people of the 21st century. Wow. Which is quite the kudos. Ronnie said on his part, it's nice and then you move on.

39:08Zing Tsjeng:I kind of like that attitude. OK, well, if Esquire called him among the 75 most influential people of the 21st century, he's going to get a hug.

39:15Simon Jack:We're not even at the end of the 21st century.

39:16Zing Tsjeng:We need to give him quite a high score. He revolutionised Indian media. It is the most populous country in the world. Seven for me.

39:24Simon Jack:Yeah, I actually think probably an eight, given how important India is and how important it will be in the rest of the 21st century.

39:31Zing Tsjeng:So then the big question for you, our listeners, is he good, bad or just another billionaire? What do you think? email us at goodbadbillionaire, that's all one word, at bbc.com, or drop us a text or WhatsApp to 001 917 686 1176 and tell us what you think.

39:50Simon Jack:And don't forget to include your name as we may read out your message on a future episode. Yeah, get in touch. We've had an email from Aishwarya about our episode on Scale AI founder Lucy Guo. She says, if Lucy were my friend, I'd find it pretty annoying if she was freeloading at my expense. That's the heart of it, isn't it? Her frugality seems to kick in when the expense borne by others isn't obvious. For example, she shops at Sheehan. Sheehan is well known for being a high volume producer of fast fashion that's terrible for the environment and is known for poor labour conditions. Now, we should note here that Sheehan has previously told the BBC it's committed to ensuring fair and dignified treatment of all workers within the supply chain and it's investing tens of millions of dollars in strengthening governance and compliance.

40:32Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, well, she goes on to say PJ's private jets are great for the convenience of the billionaire, but the environmental costs aren't borne by them either. So despite having enough money to be able to make better decisions at every turn, she's still participating in it. Someone with a$30 million home choosing to have free lunch is certainly an interesting personality.

40:51Simon Jack:She also goes on to add, I guess she's just a person and quite young, which must be taken into account. She's just got a lot more money and is a lot more visible than the average young person who's likely also making similar decisions, choosing to drive instead of walk or fly instead of taking a train, even if it's an option. Maybe a new category termed, are they being a responsible consumer, can be added to the scoring criteria for separating the really good billionaires from the others. That's an interesting suggestion, Aishwarya. Thank you for making such great content. You've tremendously improved my commute.

41:22Zing Tsjeng:We're here to serve.

41:27Simon Jack:So who do we have on the next episode?

41:30Zing Tsjeng:Well, Singh, it is time to put your balls on the dashboard.

41:33Simon Jack:in the words of the man that we are about to profile.

41:37Zing Tsjeng:Yes, that is not me saying that. That is the words of a racing car supremo.

41:42Simon Jack:Yes, you may know him as the team principal from Mercedes Formula One and the undisputed star of Netflix's Drive to Survive show.

41:50Zing Tsjeng:He is Toto Wolff.

41:55Zing Tsjeng:Good Bad Billionaire is a BBC World Service podcast produced by Hannah Hufford. The researcher is Hannah Ramazani, the editor is Paul Smith, and it's a BBC Studios production. For the BBC World Service, the senior commissioning producer is Sarah Green and the commissioning editor is John Manel.