New Delhi, April 26 -- On a sultry summer afternoon, a well-known Telugu star was unceremoniously marched out of Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad because the producer of the film in which he was starring had not settled a minor invoice. Cherukuri Ramoji Rao had personally ordered the eviction because he believed that business is business.

The story may be apocryphal, but it sums up Rao perfectly. This was a man who dealt in control - control over narrative, control over outcomes, control over systems. A biographer said he didn't want to be famous, he wanted to be inevitable. He built invisible pipelines that linked his large, successful businesses in films, media, finance and hospitality.

Also by Sundeep Khanna | Jayanti Dharma Teja: The t...