Veteran Ramoji Rao, film producer and owner of Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad, passed away today (8th June) at 4.50 a.m. in Hyderabad. He was 87. He had been undergoing treatment since some time.
A Padma Vibhushan awardee, Cherukuri Ramoji Rao founded the Ramoji Group which owns the very famous Ramoji Film City, and the Telugu news and entertainment television channel, ETV. He had started Telugu newspaper Eenadu in 1974.
Rao had produced around 50 films and telefilms under his banner of Ushakiron Movies. Among them were Nache Mayuri (starring Sudha Chandran), Pratighaat (Sujata Mehta) and Tujhe Meri Kasam (Ritesh Deshmukh and Genelia D’Souza). Most of the films he produced were in Telugu with a few in Hindi and occasional ones in Kannada, Malayalam and Bengali. His film, Nuuve Kavali (2000), had bagged the National Award for the best feature film in Telugu. His other business ventures include Margadarsi Chit Fund, Dolphin Group of hotels, Ramadevi Public School, Kalanjali shopping mall, Priya Pickles, and Mayuri Film Distributors.
His mortal remains have been kept at his residence at the Film City.