The 2025 Forbes Billionaire List, released on Wednesday, features a record 3,028 dollar billionaires globally, with 205 hailing from India. Among them are a select few from the entertainment and media industries, including Bollywood’s sole billionaire—an entrepreneur who began his journey selling toothbrushes and has now surpassed the net worth of the industry’s biggest superstars, becoming its richest figure.
#ForbesBillionaires List: Forbes has been scanning the globe for billionaires since 1987. We found 140 of them that first year. In 2025, 3,028 entrepreneurs, investors and heirs make up the ranking. Full list: https://t.co/rQkTts4Ugf (Illustration by Neil Jamieson for Forbes) pic.twitter.com/pypTQytSrp
— Forbes (@Forbes) April 2, 2025
Forbes’ 2025 list reveals that Ronnie Screwvala is the only billionaire from the Hindi film industry, with a net worth of $1.5 billion. This makes the media mogul wealthier than every Bollywood superstar—including Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, and Aamir Khan—whose combined net worth of $1.38 billion still falls short. Screwvala also surpasses top producers like Gulshan Kumar and Aditya Chopra, solidifying his position as the richest figure in Bollywood.
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Ronnie Screwvala, born in Bombay in 1956, began his entrepreneurial journey in the late 1970s by manufacturing toothbrushes. With the arrival of colour television in India during the early 1980s, he seized the opportunity by pioneering cable TV across Indian metros. This move marked his entry into the entertainment industry. In 1990, he founded UTV, which later evolved into UTV Motion Pictures, producing critically acclaimed films like Swades, Rang De Basanti, Khosla Ka Ghosla, Jodhaa Akbar, and Barfi, along with popular TV shows such as Shanti, Hip Hip Hurray, Khichdi, and Shararat.
Ronnie Screwvala becomes Bollywood’s richest as she surpasses Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Aamir Khan’s combined wealth of $1.5 billion: Reporthttps://t.co/3Ys0IEisxO
— MSN India (@msnindia) April 4, 2025
In 2012, Screwvala sold UTV to Disney in a billion-dollar deal, exiting the company and taking a brief hiatus from film production. He returned in 2017 with RSVP Movies, under which he produced films like Kedarnath, Uri: The Surgical Strike, The Sky Is Pink, and Sam Bahadur. Most recently, in 2024, he made his on-screen debut as one of the sharks on Shark Tank India, adding another chapter to his dynamic presence in the Indian media and business landscape.
Screwvala’s wealth isn’t solely built on cinema. The 68-year-old media mogul has also founded and invested in several successful ventures outside the film industry, including the edtech platform UpGrad, investment firm Unilazer Ventures, and sports enterprise USports. The combined success of these businesses, along with his prolific movie production career, has played a significant role in helping him amass his impressive $1.5 billion fortune.
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