Kovelemudi Raghavendra Rao was born in Kolavennu, Krishna Dt. Though he started off his career as an assistant director to his dad, K Prakasa Rao with movies like idA lOkam, his official debut as a movie director is Sobhan Babu's starrer, bAbu in 1975. He gave a new definition to a "commercial cinema" with "aDavi rAmuDu" movie in 1977. His greatness lies in selecting only one music director for most of his movies (Chakravarthi until the late 80's and Keeravani in the 90's) and extracting the best talent out of him. He played a siginificant role in getting mass images to NTR and Chiranjeevi with an umpteen number of musical hits.