NATE, India -- Ronnie Screwvala sat crossed-legged on the floor of a three-room schoolhouse in early November in Nate, a village about 100 miles from Mumbai, formerly Bombay, the city of his birt,where he built a billion-dollar media conglomerate.
Watching a group of children playing with colorful educational games, Screwvala, a boyish-looking 54-year-old, appeared as wide-eyed and engaged as the students.
A few minutes later he addressed about 30 teenagers from the Cathedral and John Connon School, a prestigious Mumbai private school that is his alma mater. The students were visiting the school in Nate to witness the work of the Swades Foundation, the nonprofit group that Screwvala and his wife, Zarina, founded with a large chunk of the money they received from the 2012 sale of his business, the UTV Group, to the Walt Disney Co. The transaction was valued at $1.4 billion.
The foundation has the lofty goal of lifting 1 million villagers in Maharashtra state out of poverty within six years, and then helping them build better lives.
The foundation concentrates on a cluster of about 2,000 villages in the state's Raigad district, a total of 110,000 households and more than half a million people. It offers school-based educational support and teaching tools, health and nutrition programs, water and sanitation projects, and agricultural and job training.
"We're applying all the same models we used to build our company," Screwvala said, noting that the foundation carefully quantifies the success or failure of its initiatives, making adjustments along the way.
Because the Swades Foundation is independently financed, he said, "we have the advantage of starting up projects without delay under our own steam."
On its website, the foundation listed the accomplishments since 2013 of its 300 full-time specialists and professionals, and 1,300 community volunteers.
The Swades Foundation says it has built 10,889 toilets for individual homes and 733 water storage structures that provide drinking water to 82,109 people. For its work on health and nutrition issues, the foundation notes the formation of 1,863 self-help groups, training for 1,059 community health workers, vision tests for 177,123 people, the distribution of 32,500 free pairs of eyeglasses and 5,873 free cataract operations.
The foundation says it also has trained 4,895 teachers and principals, offered computer and English literacy classes to 36,000 students, and awarded scholarships to more than 2,500.
And it claims to have introduced 20,000 farmers to new farming technologies, planted thousands of mango and cashew trees, and set up 1,411 people with dairy cows, and 1,214 others with poultry for eggs and meat.
The Screwvalas say they hope to raise a generation of socially conscious middle-class Indians and perhaps the next wave of Indian entrepreneurs.
"You have the means and the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of those less fortunate than you," Screwvala told the Cathedral and John Connon students. "Get involved in social activism."
A half-hour later, Screwvala walked through a small cashew processing plant in the village of Nate Khind. Swades -- the name means "one's own country" -- supports 20 such cashew processing units and hopes to expand to 100.
While several women separated the nuts from the shells by hand, about 30 cashew farmers and processors eagerly asked for Screwvala's advice and help. But he was more interested in what they had to say, asking them questions and listening intently to their concerns.
Their biggest obstacle is securing bank loans to expand production, they said. The bank wants collateral, but the villagers have only cashews to offer, which the bank will not accept. The villagers asked if Screwvala would lend them the money.
"But that will perpetuate your dependence on me," he responded, offering to meet with the local loan officer instead.
As the day went on, he met with others involved in Swades Foundation-supported projects: farmers developing new crops; young people studying at a skills training center; a chicken farmer; and people at a newly built water tank and a mobile eye-examination van.
In addition to forming the Swades Foundation, Screwvala has started an online education company, a sports development company and a new film production company, and he has assembled a venture capital portfolio of about 15 businesses.
With the Swades Foundation, the Screwvalas are once again at the forefront of a movement, this time in corporate social responsibility and philanthropy. Though India is among the countries with the most billionaires in the world, it has a poor history of philanthropy.
In 2015, the Singapore-based Hurun Research Institute ranked Screwvala eighth among India's philanthropists. The Swades Foundation plans to allocate $113 million over the next five years.
SundayMonday on 01/01/2017