LESSONS FROM A SERIAL ENTREPRENEUR ..SHRAVAN SHROFF
Entrepreneurs
Here Don’t Realise Benefits of Mentoring. They Only Want Easy Money
From
an entrepreneur to a mentor, Shringar Films’ Shravan Shroff has travelled a
long road in a short time
Shravan Shroff, 42, rewrote the script for Bollywood in a very different
way. And contrary to all expectations, he didn’t do it by getting behind or
appearing in front of the ubiquitous camera. Films have been a continuous
zeitgeist of Indian society for about a century now. Post-1991, even as the
country’s economy expanded, fuelled by market forces, its glitziest sector
was also forced to move with the times. “It wasn’t just about the different
films, scripts or screenplays that started being shown on the screens.
Given the changing consumer taste and increase in consumption patterns,
people started demanding a more total film-watching experience,” Shroff
explained. A scion of one of Bollywood’s oldest and most respected film
distributors and exhibitors, Shringar Films, Shroff decided to walk a
different path. He was convinced the future was in multiplexes. “The family
was always in the business of distribution of films. And when I came back
to India, post my MBA from Melbourne Business School in 1997, I decided to vertically
integrate the company and, thereby, got into exhibition. I started off by
leasing single-screen cinemas, and soon realised multiplexes were where the
consumer wanted to come and see films,” he said. The realisation led Shroff
to join hands with Manmohan Shetty of Adlabs, and the duo opened Fame
Adlabs, among the country’s most famous multiplexes, in April 2002. “It was
a 15-crore project, and I had only 1 crore with me. It was very difficult
raising money for the venture because the banks wouldn’t lend to us. In the
end, IDBI lent me 4.5 crore,” he said. Shroff was also among the first
businessmen in the country, connected to the film industry, to successfully
bring in private equity investment into a sector that was never high on the
radar of risk capital. “I realised I needed funds to scale up the business.
In 2001, I approached India Value Fund, which resulted in them making their
first investment in the media sector,” he said. According to him, Fame’s
listing on the bourses in 2004 saw the PE fund exit at 3-4 times its
original investment. But a few years down the line, Shroff himself started
looking at options other than the multiplex business. “I realised there was
going to be a slowdown with new malls coming up. And if someone offered me
good money, I was going to take it. I have no regrets, because I sold
something that I had built,” he said. By the time Shroff decided to exit
the multiplex business in 2010 Fame had grown to more than 90 screens,
spread across 12 Indian cities. But Shroff decided to go back to his
entrepreneurial roots, and once again, he chose the different route. In
2012, he joined hands with former Starcom Mediavest executive Ravi Kiran to
set up a startup accelerator VentureNursery, hailed as the country’s first
‘angelbacked accelerator’. “I have been part of an angel ecosystem for a
long time and have noticed how budding entrepreneurs continue to make the
same mistakes, especially when it comes to pitching ideas, valuations,”
Shroff pointed out. The Indian startup ecosystem, while slowly entering
maturity, has a lot further to go, and this is where Shroff feels he can
make a difference. “The whole system’s become a bit corrupt. I don’t think
entrepreneurs here realise the benefits of mentoring, and are looking to
make easy money. But it is an incredibly exciting space to be in,” he said.
(As told to Biswarup Gooptu)
Shravan Shroff
CURRENT DESIGNATION
Managing Partner, VentureNursery
COMPANIES FOUNDED
Fame India (2000), VentureNursery (2012)
ONE THING I’D DO DIFFERENTLY
Invest more in real estate
THE MOST EXCITING SPACE TO BE IN
Consumer space — healthcare services, technology
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