RANA DAGGUBATI THE SECOND INNINGS

With an expanding business portfolio, it might seem that the Baahubali actor, who has got a new lease of life, is re-inventing himself as a serial entrepreneur. But this scion of the Daggubati family always meant business. Today, he is in the pursuit of excellence

- BY ANANYA GHOSH

Rana Daggubati was probably the only contemporary actor from South cinema who had got the Hindi movie-going audience truly go weak in the knees.

Back in 2011, when he made his Bollywood debut as a soft-spoken and laid-back local Goan musician, Joki, in Rohan Sippy's Dum Maaro Dum, he didn't come with a legion of rabid fan clubs that one today associates with the 'Pan-Indian stars'. In fact, he didn't even enter Bollywood as a 'South star'; he was part of an ensemble cast led by Abhishek Bachchan and Bipasha Basu. But the tall, dark, and ruggedly handsome actor instantly became the national crush.

But then, this freshly minted smouldering romantic hero disappeared (only to casually set the screen on fire with a brief cameo as Naina's HOT photographer friend in Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani in 2013). And in place of him, emerged a hunky action hero—while his turn as the encounter cop in Ram Gopal Varma's 2012 action-drama, Department, didn't get the kind of mass recognition one expected, he grabbed attention in Neeraj Pandey's Baby. The 2015 release saw an even more bulked up Rana play the muscle man of an anti-terrorism squad. But nothing would have prepared the audience for what was to come later that year.

July 10, 2015, turned out to be a momentous day not only in the career of this blue-blooded actor, but also for Indian cinema. It was the day that the first instalment of SS Rajamouli's two-part magnum opus, Baahubali, hit the screens redefining Indian cinema and establishing the blueprint for "pan-Indian" blockbusters. "We actually coined the term 'pan-Indian' for