Born in Chennai and brought up in Mumbai, Ravichand Nallappa has always been fascinated by the big world of showbiz. A film connoisseur, he grew up on a staple diet of films helmed by auteurs like Charles Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Frank Capra, William Wyler and Steven Spielberg, and Indian master storytellers which include the likes of Vijay Anand, Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt and Bimal Roy.
After acquiring a diploma in Specialized Accountancy and Income Tax from Indian Merchant’s Chamber in Mumbai, he started his professional career in 1974 with late filmmaker BR Chopra’s production house, BR Films. From a junior accountant, he rose to being the vice president. The first film he worked on was the Amitabh Bachchan starrer Zameer that released in 1975. In Nallappa’s words, working at BR Films for 27 served as the foundation of all key learnings of the film industry. What proved to be a turning point was working on Mahabharat that changed the face of Indian television in the late 1980s. His key responsibilities at BR Films included managing finances, legal, administration and business of feature films, ad films and television shows, both domestically and internationally; increasing monetising opportunities for the entire catalogue of feature films and TV shows; and managing key relationships with the creative and business communities.
In 2001, Nallappa joined Metalight Productions (P) Limited as the vice president. During his three years at the company, he supervised the production of three feature films which included Anant Mahadevan’s Dil Vil Pyar Vyar, Madhur Bhandarkar’s Satta and Nagesh Kukunoor’s 3 Deewarein. He also distributed and released these films globally.
In 2004, he became the vice president of Indian Performing Rights Society and was responsible for overseeing licensing. From 2004 to 2006, he led a complete team of licensing officers for licensing public performance of music throughout India and increased licensing opportunities by creating legal awareness among users of music.
The next two years from 2006 to 2008 saw him as the COO at Rajshri Media (P) Ltd, that launched the portal www.rajshri.com in November 2006. He was responsible for all operational affairs of the company and the website and the ideation and creation of new content for internet and mobile platforms.
As an additional assignment, he joined United Producers Forum as its CEO in 2006. Known to be a forum that identifies and addresses serious issues faced by the production fraternity, Nallappa worked on issues relating to taxation, copyright, distribution and production of films and represented the forum at the Ministries of HR&D and I&B. Here, he closely worked with the likes of Yash Chopra, Rakesh Roshan, Amitabh Bachchan, Subhash Ghai, Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Manmohan Shetty, among others.
In 2009, he joined Pen India P Limited as the distribution and legal head. At Pen India, he worked on ten Hindi feature films Kahaani, Entertainment and Singh Is Bling. His responsibilities here entailed managing the entire release strategy including promotions, finalising pre-release publicity campaigns and deals with territorial distributors along with legal consultation on copyright issues, disputes with existing parties in production, distribution and financing.
Currently serving as the COO at Sunshine Pictures Private Limited, Nallappa oversees all operational aspects of the company, from finance and distribution to legal affairs. Notable projects under his purview include “Force 2,” “Commando 2 and 3,” and “Namastey England.” Additionally, he is instrumental in the production of upcoming ventures such as “Bastar – The Naxal Story” and “The Kerala Story,” while spearheading the company’s foray into the OTT realm with the web series “Humans”.