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Ronnie Screwvala enters digital biz; B Sai Kumar to head venture
MUMBAI: Media and broadcasting veteran Ronnie Screwvala has joined hands with B Saikumar to form a new age digital media company. Based out of Mumbai, in its first phase, the venture aims at launching a digital brand, which will offer multi-genre, multi—lingual content across video, audio, text and other traditional and new age art forms. The investment envisaged is an outlay of up to Rs 150 crore across two phases. While the first phase would be largely domestic-focused, the platform will evaluate new geographies and verticals in its second and subsequent phases.
The venture, with Sai Kumar as managing director, has also roped in former Network18 COO Ajay Chacko as CEO and has begun a global search for talent in creative, product and technology functions across entertainment, current affairs and infotainment spaces.
Digital media across the world has been competing with the traditional broadcast television, radio and print in terms of choice of consumers and marketers. With over 300 million Internet users and around 200 million of these using mobile, India is slated to become the world’s third largest digital media market. This is expected to get a further boost with the government’s Digital India plan and the launch of pan-India broadband services by existing operators and well-capitalized new players.
At a time when the world is witnessing a range of digital-first media brands and companies generating tremendous stickiness, impact and value across markets, Screwvala’s new venture aims at becoming a valuable Indian digital media company with footprints across geographies and content spaces.
Over the last two and a half decades, Screwvala has built some of the country’s valuable media businesses and has been an entrepreneur known for disruption and innovation across many verticals and genres; from cable to broadcast, from animation and gaming to motion pictures.
Sai Kumar has been instrumental in taking Network18 from a single channel company to a $1 billion plus enterprise, while Chacko played a pivotal role in the launch of many of Network18’s flagship brands across print, TV and digital.
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PNB partners Kiwi to launch credit-enabled UPI for users
Targets 180 million customers; RuPay card offers 0.5 per cent to 1.5 per cent cashback
MUMBAI: Swipe, tap, or scan credit is quietly slipping into the rhythm of everyday payments, and Punjab National Bank wants in on the action. The state-run lender has partnered with Kiwi to roll out credit-enabled UPI payments for its 180 million customers, marking a significant push to blend traditional banking with India’s fast-evolving digital payments ecosystem.
At the centre of the collaboration is the launch of the PNB Kiwi Credit Card on the RuPay network. The card is designed with a digital-first approach, offering fully online onboarding and seamless integration with UPI, allowing users to transact via scan-and-pay while accessing credit.
The offering also brings in a rewards layer, with cashback ranging from 0.5 per cent to 1.5 per cent on online transactions, positioning the product as both a convenience play and a spending incentive.
The move comes as UPI continues to dominate India’s digital payments landscape, increasingly blurring the lines between debit-led transactions and credit access. For PNB, which operates over 10,000 branches around 60 per cent in semi-urban and rural areas, the partnership signals a targeted effort to extend formal credit to segments that have traditionally remained underserved.
The collaboration also reflects a broader industry shift, where banks and fintech platforms are converging to embed credit directly into payment flows, reducing friction while expanding access.
With RuPay credit cards gaining traction and UPI evolving beyond peer-to-peer transfers, the PNB–Kiwi tie-up positions both players at the intersection of scale, accessibility, and the next phase of digital finance in India.
