It all started with my grandfather, who started a studio in Poona “The Art Gallery” upgrading himself from being a frame maker of repute. With the good support of his 2 elder sons (Ladharam & Narayandas) & later 2 younger sons Purshotham & Ramesh) joining in, Purshotham being my father. Later in 1962 one of my uncle’s Narayandas moved to Hyderabad in 1962 & founded "The Ruby Art Studio" & encouraged my dad with family to follow suit. Dad started a studio called "The Sweet Art Studio" in Ameerpet in 1964 after assisting Uncle Narayandas for sometime. Later he moved to Kachiguda & started "Rani Art Studio" in 1966. Meanwhile Uncle Ramesh started his own studio Asha Arts Photo Studio at Shanker Shet Road, Poona in 1974.

I was born in Poona in 1963, studied up to High school and started managing Dad's studio since the age of 15. Started out as a wedding & general photographer, soon got bored & wanted something challenging in life.

One fine day my cousin from Madras called up & told me about advertising & industrial photography, which he started & was minting money. I caught the next train & assisted him for one week & saw him shooting models, factories, products, meeting big clients & was overwhelmed & excited.

Back in Hyderabad, it did not take long to convince my parents to permit me to pursue the same line as it was part of photography. Through trial & error my journey began & I started working for all major ad agencies, like Sistas, Akshara, Imageads, RK Swamy, Associated, Lintas, & industries like BHEL, ITC, Ampro, Natco, Dr Reddys, Nagarjuna Fertilizers, AP Tourism, India Today, Mcdowells, Taj Group of Hotels, ISB & lots of others.

Along the way collected lot of awards like “Photographer of Year” from Dinodia Picture Agency from the years 1991 to the year 2000 (Silvers & Bronzes) & also “Photographer of the “Decade”. Recently awarded Lifetime Achievement Award by Telangana Events Association & Bheeshma Award from Telangana Photographers Association.

In 1996 we organized a major photography workshop & exhibition of photo products in Hyderabad, which was the 1st time for professionals & attended by pros & amateurs from Andhra, Maharashtra, Karnataka. This was followed by another big one in 1997.

Around the same time post liberalization real estate prices shot up & big restaurants, Irani hotels gave way to smaller compact Darshini fast food joints. I sensed a market here. The customer was not ready to pay my assignment fee, food stylist fee, payment for the food used for the shoot & other expenses. So I came up with the concept of shooting & cataloguing all kinds of food images in advance. All the customer had to do was choose from 50 varieties of Idly or wada/dosa/poori etc & we would make the translite displays along with boxes as we had a inhouse carpenter too.

In the year 2000, when everyone was doing outsourcing business in software, we too dabbled in it in our own way. We used to do photo retouching, restoration for customers sitting in the USA, Canada, which gave us good foreign exchange till 2010. Our studio in fact looked like a mini software company with 12-15 guys working day & night.

In 2010 we started Kodak Express store in City Center Mall, which is doing great business in photo gifts, like personalized mugs, t-shirts, photo frames, wood engravings, crystals, led frames etc