[Business Today]

Published date: 18th Aug 2013

In his first media interaction since The Walt Disney Company took over UTV, RONNIE SCREWVALA, now turned employee, tells CHAITANYA KALBAG and AJITA SHASHIDHAR how he intends to take the company to greater heights.

How difficult was it to transition from a successful entrepreneur-driven company to being a part of a large global company?

UTV was a listed company for the last six or seven years before it got acquired. Fifty per cent of its board of directors was independent. Disney already had close to 50 per cent shareholding for many years. As a public company, we were under constant scrutiny and accountability – to shareholders, to the board, analysts, team members and of course, our consumers and audience.

“Entrepreneurial” is in the DNA of an organisation not in an individual. I would say that was part of our culture and the reason for the success of the erstwhile UTV. Candidly, not much has changed. In fact, we can now focus better on the mid-and-long-term without quarter on quarter pressures.

How big is Disney UTV in Disney’s global scheme of things?

In the global scheme of things, it won’t be a needle mover. because The Walt Disney Company is $42 billion in terms of revenue.

Disney’s impact in India has been limited. Something has obviously not clicked.

You can look at a cup and call it either half full or half empty. I think if you are looking at global media companies, you need to see where the needle has moved for many of them. Many of them have been around since the 1990s. It took 10. years for them to see growth, with a tremendous amount of investment in those first 10 years. I would say that The Walt Disney Company, from that perspective has not had those kinds of losses.

It looked for an acquisition and that’s how it acquired UTV. Now the blueprint for the next five years is how to bring scale to all our verticals. If we benchmark The Walt Disney Company to other Indian media companies or global giants here -the focus is really on broadcasting for most of the others. But that’s not the philosophy of The Walt Disney Company. At the end of the day we are all about franchises, characters, experiential entertainment and consumer products.

So, what is the grand plan from here on?

When Disney acquired UTV one-and-half-years ago, there were a couple of trigger points and that kind of spells out what the future holds. One, media (in India) is still evolving and needs consistent investment. In that context, scale has been something that has always intrigued me personally and from a UTV perspective also we were looking at scale. From a Walt Disney perspective, it had an office here and it was looking at scale. So, the coming together actually meant that we could do a couple of things. We could come out of the listed space and not look at quarter to quarter earnings and therefore we could look at the business from a five-year or 10-year point of view. The question of then making deep investments in all the verticals was the exciting part to me.

What about the movies? How lucrative has that been?

I think we are working with a great set of young directors. We know who our target audience is. The strong part of The Walt Disney Company India now is we have in-depth knowledge of our consumer. Everything starts from understanding the audience. The cross-pollination that comes from having run four Disney channels, a Bindass youth channel. and doing our movies… is a massive asset for us to scale up to what we want to do. Do other media companies have this asset? No, because they are mostly platforms. They more or less acquire content and run it successfully. That is our differentiating factor.

You have nine channels now. but there is a feeling that there is a gap in your bouquet be- cause you don’t have a general entertainment channel (GEC). Are you content with that?

I don’t understand gap. A gap is when you are competing in a broadcast space and you want to be the No.1 broadcaster in the country. That’s not what we want to be at Walt Disney.

So, you are happy occupying a niche?

I won’t call myself niche. I’m a strong No.5 without a GEC. So, if you subtract the GEC from the other four and then do the ranking, you will redefine the word niche. If you take out the GEC ratings and look at the rankings, we won’t be fifth. We will be No.2.

Advertisers are constantly looking for the whole spectrum of channels…

No. They are looking for demographics and they are much more demographic specific today. I don’t have a gap. Yes, there is a lowest common denominator that one would go for, and after that everything else is across the board.

To us beauty is in the eye of the beholder. As far as I am concerned, I’m the beauty and I’m the beholder. I don’t have a gap. For me, the broadcasting channels we are into are very epic to the content that we create, the franchises we create. We are interested in the four years to 40 years category and the 15 years to 24 years. Why, because the four to 40 audience, or the family, embellishes the Disney brand, and the 15 to 24 audience is what UTV has carved out.

A lot that is happening at Disney UTV now is because of what you have done in the past 30 years. Is the company too dependent on you? How will that change? We also understand you are bit of a controlling person. You look at most areas of the business yourself.

The Walt Disney Company has not acquired a company based on one individual. Would Walt Disney have acquired completely out of the blue? No. For the last five years, we have had more than a courtship. It was a strong embedded understanding. The board had full exposure to all our team members. If we look at each of these spaces individually, they are completely and totally capable. They are building their respective businesses completely on their own, creatively and businesswise. That’s the team. It’s a core over- all team Walt Disney has acquired.

I heard you work insane hours? What’s your work-life balance like?

It’s pretty good. I’m happy… If you ask me if I am completely emotionally submerged in my work. I’m not. It’s important to keep that balance. If you are going to be completely emotionally submerged, you will not be able to meet that objective.

We hear you are focusing quite a bit on your venture capital fund as well as philanthropy now…

My focus on private equity is really not there to that level. Right now I’m completely into media. But I do have a family office which is independently run. As for the philanthropy… we are an execution foundation. Philanthropy is where you cut a cheque and give it to NGOs. We are not cutting a cheque. That is completely being handled by Zarine, my wife… So. does one have a strong inclination for philanthropy, sure. Is that going to be a full-time occupation, no.

So, where do you see yourself for the next five to 10 years?

I think there is a lot to be done.

So, you are here for the long-term?

I am here and I am having this conversation with you. (Smiles),

Do you think there is going to be any kind of catalytic shift or shake-up of some sort in the industry?

From the business perspective the fact that subscribers and viewers will start wanting to pay for the content they consume, there will be a catalytic shift. The whole ecosystem is right now only based on advertising… with that will come more channels, more content. The whole ecosystem goes through the roof. Will it happen just because digitisation has been announced? No, it will take two to three years.