Gangaraju Gunnam

He worked as a door to door sales representative for Navbharath Cigarettes and later passed the Probationary officers exam in State Bank of India. After spending six months at Dibrugarh and five months at Shillong, he got bored of the job, quit and came back to Hyderabad.[3][4]

He started to work as a copy-writer at his friend's advertising agency. They ran it for about five years and it ended up as a loss-making venture.[4] Then, he decided to set up his own designer studio, a studio that makes the basic designs for ad agencies, called Fountain Head Design studio, named after his favourite book. But it didn't workout.[3] He was interested in filmmaking but could not find the time.[5] So, he wanted to start a business that would not require much thinking and opened a Vadilal ice-cream parlour which also ended up as a failure.[3]

Then, he borrowed ₹1,500 from a friend and started the business of greeting cards named 'Font Cards'. He priced his greeting cards at ₹15 per card, higher than the then market leader Hallmark Cards whose cards were priced at ₹9 per card. This business was successful.[3]

Even before starting his greeting card business, Gangaraju dabbled in films. He was approached by C. L. Narasareddy (producer of Geethanjali) and Yarlagadda Surendra (co-producer of Siva) for the Telugu remake of the Malayalam film Malootty (1990), which starred Shamili in one of her first roles.[3] Gangaraju wanted to improve upon the original and added a brother character and cast Tarun for the role. This film started before Anjali (1990) which also starred Shamili and Tarun. After shooting for about seven days, the film was shelved due to financial constraints.[3]

When 'Font Cards' business was at high, he started the film Little Soldiers (1996) with a story he had written back in 1982 or 1984.[3][4][5] Initially, it was supposed to be produced by someone else with Gangaraju directing it. When the producer backed out, Gangaraju himself produced the film. He said the hardest part about the film was making the three-year-old girl Kavya, who played one of the prominent characters in the film, to act. Though she is a non-Telugu girl, she dubbed in her own voice for all the scenes by learning Telugu in 3 months. As per Gangaraju, he wrote the climax booby traps sequence years before the release of Home Alone (1993). Gangaraju mentioned that he invested ₹1.06 crore on the film and recovered ₹50–60 lakh from it as advances and incurred a loss of around ₹50 lakh.[6][3] He feels the film would have performed better with a different publicity strategy.[3] He also mentioned the long shooting time as a reason for the film's losses.[5]

Their first project under the 'Just Yellow' banner was Amrutham. Amrutham was a sitcom television series created and co-produced by Gunnam Gangaraju.[7] It is widely considered to be the greatest Telugu comedy TV series of all time.[1][2] The show originally aired on Gemini TV every Sunday on prime time 8 PM slot.[7] It ran for exactly six years from 18 November 2001 to 18 November 2007 for 313 episodes.[8][9]

• Aithe - Dialogues (2003)
• Anukokunda Oka Roju - Dialogues (2005)
• Amrutham - Story & Dialogues (2007)
• Katha - Dialogues (2009)
• Laya TV Serial - Story (2008–2010)
• Edureetha TV Serial - Story (2011)
• Ghazi - Screenplay, Dialogues (2017)
• Amrutham Dhvitheeyam (2020)

• Little Soldiers (1996)
• Amma Cheppindi (2006)
• Amrutham Chandamamalo (2014)

• Little Soldiers (1996)
• Aithe (2003)
• Anukokunda Oka Roju (2005)
• Bommalata (2006)
• Amma Cheppindi (2006)
• In a Day (2006)
• Katha (2009)

• Little Soldiers (1996)

• Amrutham (2001–2007; 313 episodes)
• Nanna (2003–2004; 89 episodes)
• Radha Madhu (2006–2008; 450 episodes)
• Ammamma.com (2006–2007; 200 episodes)
• Laya (2008–2010; 321 episodes)
• Adagaka Ichina Manasu (2011; Stopped after 60 episodes)
• Edureetha (2011)
• Prathibinbam (2014–2015)