Ronnie Screwvala expects to scale new heights in his second innings

Online education venture Upgrad to be launched in November, digital media business Arre in January

Founder of UTV Group Ronnie Screwvala is expecting his new ventures to grow 10 times more than his previous foray. He has recently re-entered the entrepreneurship field with three businesses - online education, digital media and sports.

Responding to a question on the outlook of his new ventures he said, "I hope it to be 10 times of what one achieved in the first innings. Thats the goal."

"I am back as an entrepreneur and I am doing things which I did 20 years back as a start-up," he said. He added that these are the high impact sectors and would address the youth.

The online education Upgrad is an initiative for post graduate and specialisation courses and Mayank Kumar is a co-founder in the venture. The digital media company Arre is working on both platform and content including deep seeded news. It has two co-founders, B Saikumar and Ajay Chacko who were in leading management roles in Network 18. In sports kabbadi, football, motor racing etc are the focus.

He said that currently there are various challenges in education, such as infrastructure issues, shortage of adequate supply of faculty and the compulsion of people to work while they learn. Considering that in the near future people are going to look for short term courses and upgradations during their career, Upgrad will offer those courses, he added. This business is expected to be launched in November, this year.

The connotation the promoters give to the word "Arre", which is a word used in various connotations depending upon when it is used, is Unignorable. Whether in text, podcast or in video, it will be unignorable, he said. It would be doing indeapth news and a lot of fund related content. The core audience would be in the age of 18 to 30. That itself would be categorised into 18-22, 22-25 and 26-30, which are three different generations. It will have news, documentaries, podcasts, which is dramatised audio and video.

"To me 18-30 years, B2C (business to consumer) consumer facing business is where I am excited and I am focused on," he said.

India has huge potential in terms of start ups and it would not be sufficient even if the country produces 10,000 start ups a year. The mentality favouring towards salaried jobs and the fear of failure are some of the factors still persisting in the mind of people, he said. He added that the health and education would be some of the few sectors which has immense potential for growth.