lit a candle 4h agoSaw a segment about him years ago on some late night cable thing about Guinness World Records, the largest handwritten poem or something like that. Stuck with me that a construction guy was also out there writing devotional poetry for nine years straight. 89 is a full life.
Their story
AVS Raju, born Alluri Venkata Satyanarayana Raju, was an Indian industrialist who founded Nagarjuna Construction Company, now NCC Limited, one of the country's major construction and infrastructure groups. He was also a promoter of several early Hyderabad industries, a philanthropist and a prolific writer of devotional poetry, and he received…
AVS Raju, born Alluri Venkata Satyanarayana Raju, was an Indian industrialist who founded Nagarjuna Construction Company, now NCC Limited, one of the country's major construction and infrastructure groups. He was also a promoter of several early Hyderabad industries, a philanthropist and a prolific writer of devotional poetry, and he received the Padma Shri in 2010. He died on 13 October 2026, aged 89.
Raju was born on 18 April 1937 in the village of Antarvedipalem in East Godavari district, in what is now Andhra Pradesh, into a family that had been in construction for three generations. He had a basic education and, after matriculation, left his village at about 18 to make his way in Hyderabad, working in agriculture, construction and industry. He entered business in 1956.
In 1975 and 1976 he was one of the promoters of Nagarjuna Steels, the first company of what became the Nagarjuna group in Hyderabad, and in 1983 and 1984 he helped promote Deccan Cements, described as the first mini cement plant in India. In 1978 he founded Nagarjuna Construction Company. It became a public limited company in 1990 and was listed on the Bombay and National stock exchanges in 1992. Under his leadership and later that of his son, A. A. V. Ranga Raju, the managing director, it grew from a building contractor into a group working on buildings, roads, water, irrigation, power transmission, railways and mining, with operations in the Gulf and South Asia. He remained its founder and chairman emeritus.
Outside business he founded the NCC Foundation to support education, health care and shelter for needy and orphaned children, was a director of the Gokaraju Rangaraju Institute of Engineering and Technology and served on the executive committee of the Indian Red Cross Society in Andhra Pradesh. He wrote poetry, and in 2008 set a Guinness World Record for the largest single volume of poetry, a work on Sri Sathya Sai Baba. Acharya Nagarjuna University gave him an honorary doctorate in 2008, the Builders' Association of India gave him a lifetime achievement award in 2006, and President Pratibha Patil presented him with the Padma Shri for trade and industry in 2010. A biography, Standing Tall, was published in English and Telugu in 2025.
NCC Limited announced that Raju died at 7.15 pm on Tuesday 13 October 2026. The company did not give a cause of death. Members of the public were invited to pay their final respects at his home in Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad, from the following morning.
Biography adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), The Economic Times, NCC Limited, avsraju.org, Deccan Chronicle. Wikipedia ↗
Photos
1AVS Raju receiving the Padma Shri at Rashtrapati Bhavan, 31 March 2010
by People Forever
it was the longest devotional poem I think, my dad watched that same clip