The highlight of this movie was the debut of T. Grabbing an opportunity that came his way, AVM made Nandakumar, Tamil version of a Marathi film launching it as a Pragati production. In association with Jayanthilal, a cinema house owner based in Bangalore, he promoted a new company Pragati Pictures Limited. The reverses forced Meiyappan to lie low but only for a while. Krishnaswamy joined the unit as assistant director who was associated with Meiyappan for nearly a decade and wrote and directed the early AVM productions. At this point, an aspiring amateur actor and college graduate A. The film was shot in Calcutta and proved a total flop as the one that followed named Ratnavali. The dawn of the talkie era (1931) inspired Meiyappan to start Saraswathi Sound Productions and he launched his maiden movie venture, Alli Arjuna a Hindu mythology based movie. Maiden venture File:AVM Studios Globe.jpg Varadachari, its manager, and his lawyer friend Thoothukudi Govindachari Raghavachari he produced many records. Narayana Iyengar, Subbaiah Chettiar and others promoted Saraswathi Stores. He came to Madras where along with friends K. Meiyappan, who joined his father's shop even as a teenager, decided to produce gramophone records instead of merely marketing them. Avichi Chettiar ran a mini-department store, named AV & Sons. Born on 28 July 1907, Avichi Meiyappan hailed from a Nattukottai Nagarathar family of Karaikkudi in Tamil Nadu.