With Pink Elephant Pictures expanding its slate after the response to Committee Kurrollu, Niharika Konidela is focused on building, not just appearing. “I feel less need to prove anything now,” she says. “To people, to the industry… even to myself.”
There’s always an expectation that comes with a surname like Konidela, she says. “It comes before you do.” For her, it wasn’t something to push against, but not something to lean on either.
Long before Telugu OTT became what it is today, Niharika backed a YouTube web series, at a time when digital — especially regional — wasn’t taken seriously. “That was the first time I trusted my gut,” she says. “There was no blueprint. I just knew I wanted to do it.”
That instinct stayed.
The weight of legacy didn’t hit her on a film set. It came earlier. “The first time I felt it was when I said I wanted to become an actress,” she says. “It was my decision. But it needed acceptance.”
Now, through her banner Pink Elephant Pictures, she’s working towards building something consistent. “I don’t want to just put out projects. If something comes from my banner, I want people to trust it. When people watched Committee Kurrollu, a coming-of-age story, and said they saw themselves in it — some of them were in tears — that felt like success,” she says.
Moments that stay
“My uncle built everything from scratch,” she says, speaking of Chiranjeevi.
“So when he appreciates something, you know it’s genuine. It mattered more than I expected.”
Not everything has moved at the same pace. “There was a phase where nothing was really happening. No work, a lot of confusion. It was tough,” she says. It forced a reset. “I had to sit with myself and figure things out. I changed how I think. I worked on myself. I became someone I actually like.”
That shift brought clarity.
“You realise your reality is what you keep telling yourself,” she says. “It starts there.” The outside noise hasn’t gone anywhere. “I’m quite used to people having opinions about my personal life now. Honestly, I deal with it by not dealing with it. They don’t know me, they don’t know my life, but they still tell me how I should live. I find that funny now. It wasn’t funny earlier. It used to affect me. Not anymore,” she says.
Discipline...
If there’s one thing she returns to often, it’s discipline. “I’ve heard it all my life. Discipline, discipline, discipline! In this industry, things can look very convincing. But you’re the one who gets affected in the end. So you have to be clear about what you want,” she says.
Today, her approach is wider. “As a producer, my vision hasn’t changed. I want to tell stories people stay with. As an actor, I’ve changed a lot. I’m not just looking at my role anymore. I look at the whole film now — what it is, who’s backing it, and whether people will even know it exists,” she says.
Highlights: “There was a phase where nothing was really happening. No work, a lot of confusion. It was tough. It forced a reset. I had to sit with myself and figure things out. I changed how I think. I worked on myself.
“As a producer, my vision hasn’t changed. I want to tell stories
people stay with. As an actor, I’ve changed a lot. I’m not just looking at my role anymore. I look at the whole film now — what it is, who’s backing it and whether people will even know it exists”
I’m quite used to people having opinions about my personal life now. Honestly, I deal with it by not dealing with it. They don’t know me, they don’t know my life, but they still tell me how I should live. I find that funny now. It wasn’t funny earlier. It used to affect me. Not anymore”
