Sai Ketan Rao’s Hindi television credits — Mehendi Hai Rachne Waal, Imlie and the web series Suraag 2.0 — arrived after a much longer, less visible period of groundwork in Hyderabad. In an interview with The Times of India, he describes a path built less on introductions than on repeated visits, auditions and patience.
A Hyderabad start
Rao grew up with a Hyderabadi mother and a Mumbai father, but no family door into the business. He discovered acting during his school years, finished engineering and an MBA, and joined Ramanaidu Film School in 2017. The training, he says, was the straightforward part; finding work was not.
- He visited production offices in Banjara Hills and Jubilee Hills with photographs.
- He attended auditions and casting calls as they came up.
- Workshops and theatre gave him contacts and an understanding of the industry.
The cost of being an outsider
Rao is direct about the structural gap. Without a relative or parent to recommend him, he says, breaking in takes much longer. The uncertainty felt sharper when college friends left for jobs abroad, and the pandemic then stalled projects he had already signed.
At one point he thought acting might not happen. His response was to stay in the queue. “Once you are an outsider, you are an outsider,” he told The Times of India, describing the long wait for projects to come together.
Why finite formats matter
Having worked across Telugu and Hindi television, films and streaming, Rao argues that web series and films offer a broader creative spectrum. Daily fiction, he says, is often rewritten around TRPs, thinning the story until audiences lose interest. He welcomes the move toward finite-format Hindi shows, where a planned ending protects the writing.
For readers who watch both the old and new Hindi content economy, this is the signal to track: short-arc television is becoming more than an experiment, and performers who can move between languages and formats are positioning themselves for that shift.
Rao wants emotionally layered, intense roles — from an Indian James Bond to a Don-like figure — and says he does not want to limit himself to one language or medium.
Source: The Times of India
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