Jackie Shroff and his wife Ayesha Shroff made one of the smartest investment choices of their career when they backed Sony Entertainment Television at its launch in India in 1995. In a recent interview, Ayesha reflected on the deal, sharing how she played a key role in making it happen and recalling the substantial returns they earned from the investment.
Speaking to Zero1 Hustle YouTube channel, Ayesha said, “We were setting up Sony Entertainment Television channel in India, and it was a fantastic experience, to be honest. It was my first encounter with a whole corporate structure, and that too, was Sony. We were a group of seven people; my husband brought in the fame and, obviously, his image to the group. We had a banker, a television guy, and another guy well versed in computers, so everyone brought in a special skill to the group. It was a very diverse group, and we tried to woo the company for a whole year. That experience was very exciting, the going back and forth on the deal, the due diligence, the paperwork.”
Ayesha then shared that the deal was locked after she threw a party for the Sony’s international executives, that was attended by all the famous Bollywood celebrities. “Now, it’s Sony, so they have a lot of big brands and business houses behind them as well. Because of this, they were reluctant to sign our deal. One day, I suggested to my husband, ‘Let’s just have a party and invite everyone over.’ We weren’t really the party kind, and everyone from the entire film industry showed up. I just thought that the party was a good way to go, and at the end of the day we would either be celebrating, or we would be saying goodbye for good. We hosted the party at this club called RG’s on Marine Drive back then, and it was a crazy night. At 6 am the party finished, and the boss who had come from all the way to LA said, ‘F*** this, we are signing the contract with this group.’ We signed the papers the very next day”, she added.
When Ayesha was asked about the returns of their massive investment, she replied, “Entertainment isn’t about the deals and the paperwork; it is about the people. We gave Sony that, and it was the best investment we ever made, and we had a very happy exit from that deal. We actually had a clause in our contract that either all seven of us were going to be in together, or none of us would be. Some of the people wanted to leave, so we got out.” The host then directly asked her, “If you had invested Rs 100 in that deal, how much did you make at the end of it?”, and Ayesha asnwered, ‘It was much more than that, and if you apply that concept to the deal, it was like Rs 1 lakh to Rs 100 crore back then. I don’t think I would have stayed even if the partners wanted to stay on. It was time to leave.”
Now, Jackie Shroff has a staggering net worth of Rs 400 crore, due to their investments in sports league and hospitality servives. The family owns a chain of MMA gyms called MMA Matrix and also owns an MMA promotion company Matrix Fight Night, which is operated by their son Tiger Shroff and daughter Krishna Shroff.