Mano Murthy is a leading musician and composer in the Kannada film industry. Although his compositions in his earlier films were also successful, he shot to fame with Mungaru Male, one of the biggest hits in Kannada industry. Before moving onto becoming a composer, he was an entrepreneur, having co-founded three companies in California. He was a programmer in Microsoft. His latest venture, an IP security provider called Allegro Systems, was acquired by Cisco Systems.