Book Review: Dream with your eyes open

“Dream with your eyes open-An Entrepreneurial Journey” is written by Ronnie Screwvala who founded and led the UTV Group.

Ronnie started UTV with Rs.37,500…he sold it many years later to Disney for over 2000 Crores

The Book describes the entrepreneurial journey of Ronnie who in the course of 25 years established a cable TV business, a tooth brush business, a TV content business and finally a broadcasting business.

The Book is full of anecdotes from Ronnie’s business life and he offers lessons to other entrepreneurs from these.

The book is written in a very light and humorous way as seen from the paragraph below:

“Driving in India is a neat metaphor for looking around the bend. One half of your driving skills amounts to how you drive,the other half preempts how everyone else drives. That’s just India. No lane traffic,absolute chaos and a heightened sense of alertness and anticipation that accompanies the (normally) simple and safe act of driving. As a leader and entrepreneur, be vigilant.”

The Book also gives interesting insights into the TV and Film industry…how very difficult it is for “outsiders” to break in this insular world.

Another aspect which I found very interesting was Ronnie’s phenomenal deal making skills and his utter disdain for investment bankers. One of his awesome deals was where he convinced Vijay Mallya to sell his TV channels (Vijaya TV) to him with a deffered payment…i.e. he got control of the assets first and the payments to be made later

Do Buy this Book if interested in entrepreneurship and to understand the Indian Media Sector better.