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Indian Express
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Tiger Shroff and family owns MMA league, training facility with 16 gyms across India: Ayesha and Krishna Shroff explain their business empire
Almost all Bollywood celebrities diversify their portfolio and have multiple income sources, like businesses and real estate. Similarly, actor Tiger Shroff has invested in his own training facility called MMA Matrix and an MMA fighting league called Matrix Fight Night. However, he isn't the sole owner of these and shares the control with his mother, Ayesha Shroff, and sister, Krishna Shroff. In a recent interview, Ayesha talked about her own career as a film producer in Bollywood and how the family have overcome tough times to create an empire for themselves. While talking to Zero1 Hustle, both mother and daughter shared the story behind the gym, and Krishna said, 'Our gym is basically a passion project that my mother, brother, and I came together for. There is no one better than Tiger to represent something like fitness; he is the epitome of it. I think a lot of tier-2 and 3 cities have shown him a lot of love, and some of his most loyal fans come from those places. Tiger was very keen to bring these facilities to them.' Ayesha added that the idea behind the Matrix gym was to create a premium space that combined several different aspects of fitness and martial arts. ALSO READ: Amitabh Bachchan-Katrina Kaif film was shot at Dubai hotel that turned down James Bond, on Gaddafi's private jet; flopped instantly, bankrupted Jackie Shroff 'No one really had what our gym possessed, at least in the city. Tiger already did martial arts, and Krishna was big on strength training. So we thought of building a space which combines both those disciplines. The name came from the film Matrix. There is no division, and everyone contributes equally to the venture, Tiger less in terms of time, because of his acting career. We put in our own money, and we weren't answerable to any investors. Today we have 16 gyms Pan-India, including our mothership here. Now we have involved some partners as well, and we choose between franchising or partnering up with someone, based on the kind of money they can put in,' said Ayesha. Talking about the martial arts promotion company Matrix Fight Night, Ayesha took the viewers back to where the journey started for them and said, 'It all started when we attended an MMA show here in India, and Tiger was a part of the organisation that hosted it for some time as well. Krishna had been a fan of MMA for a long time, and she was also very familiar with a lot of Indian and international fighters, so that's her strong point. I take care of the organising aspect of it all, and my love for films and production translates here. Everything, down to the very last detail, goes through me.' She explained the pay scale of their organisation and the business model and stated that they are on their way to competing with the biggest brands in the world of MMA. 'The ticketing thing doesn't work in India yet, because we still don't have the megastars to bring in those huge crowds. When we came into the space, the starting salary for an Indian fighter was $200 (Rs 17k), and now a debut fighter gets paid $2000 (Rs 1.74 lakh). If you are fighting for a title, you get paid $10k (Rs 8.7 lakh). So if you compare our pay scale with a lot of other promotions globally, we are still pretty good. The idea is to make this into a proper salaried profession for all these fighters. We are currently on JioHotstar, and we literally bullied them for that platform. They didn't expect the numbers we got, and then they came back to us all excited and even came to watch a show.' A post shared by Matrix Fight Night [™️] (@mfn_mma) Krishna added and said, 'We are in the process of changing the whole revenue model, because a lot of these fighters didn't have any kind of recognition before MFN, and now they have massive followings in their hometowns and villages.' MFN has been active since 2019, and they have had 17 shows to date.
Indian Express
19 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Amitabh Bachchan-Katrina Kaif film was shot at Dubai hotel that turned down James Bond, on Gaddafi's private jet; flopped instantly, bankrupted Jackie Shroff
Bollywood is a fleeting business, and most of the radical ideas that find their way to a screen don't really end up making a mark on the overall picture of the industry. Boom (2003), directed by Kaizad Gustad, is one such example, and nothing could save this film from its fate, not the money put into it, not the stellar cast, consisting of names like Amitabh Bachchan, Jackie Shroff, Gulshan Grover, Madhu Sapre, Padma Lakshmi, or debutante Katrina Kaif. Jackie's wife, Ayesha Shroff, produced the film, and in a recent interview she recalled all that they had achieved during the filming and why its ultimate failure hurt even more. Ayesha and daughter Krishna Shroff sat down to have a chat about their business ventures and life on the YouTube channel of Zero1 Hustle. Ayesha admitted that she quit acting because she felt two actors couldn't make a marriage work. She eventually turned a producer, 'I always had that passion for movies, and my husband was also producing films. Suddenly he got very busy, and he told me, 'Listen, I don't have time for this; can you look into it?' I decided to get into it, and I loved it immediately. Then I did another film, Jis Desh Mai Ganga Rehta Hai, with Govinda. Everyone told me that it would take me 50 years to complete the film because he was supposedly this moody star. I used to go to his house every day, pick him up and bring him to the set. Except for the songs, we finished the shooting in 30 days.' ALSO READ: Gulshan Grover had an awkward moment with Katrina Kaif in Boom and the reason was Amitabh Bachchan. Read more She talked about her and Jackie's investment into Sony and how exiting that deal had made them quite a comfortable amount of money. 'After we exited from partnering with Sony, we made Boom. It was a fantastic experience, and it was very much ahead of its time. Actually, I was making money before the film was released. We had such an incredible cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Gulshan Grover, and Jackie, and we got a 17-year-old Katrina Kaif from London. Salman Rushdie used to hang out at our sets because he was seeing Padma Lakshmi at the time. We had Bo Derek, and I even got her to do the iconic scene from her film Ten, but instead of a swimsuit, she was wearing a golden saree,' shared Ayesha. Talking about the film, she added, 'We shot in the Burj Al-Arab, and at the same time, the James Bond people had contacted the hotel for the same location, because they wanted to make it into the villain's lair, but they said no. I pleaded with them, and that was Mr Bachchan's house in the film. We had Gaddafi's private jet, and we even shut down Dubai airport for half a day.' Despite all the efforts, money and cameo appearances, the film tanked at the box office, and Ayesha credits that to the film getting leaked before release. She said, 'Boom changed the look of Bollywood, but the film got pirated before release. DVDs were selling in front of every train station, and all the distributors backed out; I had no money to pay anyone. At that point in time, Jackie told me that we were going to release the film no matter what, and we signed bonds for everyone. We did go through some sh*tty times. But as a unit and as a family, we all kept each other happy and content. Whatever negative happened, or when the 'doomsday' came, we made an adventure out of it. My husband has a favourite quote, which is, 'I am a blank cheque,' and he kept on working, and we never let the kids know that we were going through any financial trauma. Even when things were really bad, all of us were part of an adventure, and we got through it.'
