2005–2012: Early career

Vanga worked as an apprentice for the film Manasu Maata Vinadhu in 2005 for 25 days at Rushikonda Beach, Vizag. He worked for a few Tollywood films, including Kedi (2010) as an assistant director with Kiran Kumar and Malli Malli Idi Rani Roju (2015) as an associate director with Kranthi Madhav. He started writing the script for a film titled Sugar Factory for his directorial debut, but he eventually shelved it and started writing the script of Arjun Reddy instead.

2013–2017: Directorial debut and recognition

Vanga started writing the script for Arjun Reddy in 2013 and finished it in two years. Producer Swapna Dutt and Sharwanand showed interest to produce and act in the film, however, it did not pan out as expected as Sharwanand had multiple projects in the queue at the time. He was introduced to Vijay Deverakonda by a common friend. He cast him as the lead for his directorial debut Arjun Reddy. The film was released on 25 August 2017 to critical acclaim and became a blockbuster hit. It was produced on a minuscule budget of ₹4–5 crores, but went on to gross more than ₹50 crores (US$8 million) at the box office.^[3][4][5] However, during the release, it constantly ran into trouble with the censor board for the depiction of smoking and drug use. It also created a furor for its kissing scenes and poster, which were eventually approved by the Telangana Film Chamber. Senior political leader, V. Hanumantha Rao, raged over the positioning of the film to the audience. He went on to publicly peeling off the posters of the film, encouraging the audience to not entertain such films.

2018–present: Recent work

The next year, Vanga made a cameo appearance as Vedantam Raghavayya in the biographical film Mahanati. The same year, it was confirmed that Vanga himself will be directing the Hindi version of Arjun Reddy titled Kabir Singh.^[6] He signed up Shahid Kapoor as the lead. Kiara Advani was roped into playing the female lead. The film was produced by Murad Khetani and Ashwin Warde, and the rights to the original film were purchased for ₹15 million. The filming began in July 2018 and the movie was released on 21 June 2019 and became a major blockbuster success at the box office, earning over 379 crores Worldwide and over 278 crores net domestically in India, thus becoming part of the 200 crore club.

In January 2021, Vanga's next directorial titled Animal, a gangster film starring Ranbir Kapoor in lead was announced. It was produced by T-Series, Bhadrakhali Pictures, and Cine1Studios.^[7] His next directorial, Spirit, was announced in October 2021 It will star Prabhas, in his 25th film, and produced jointly by T-Series and Bhadrakali Pictures.^[8] Later, he announced, his 5th directorial (set to take place after Spirit) in March 2023. The film is set to star Allu Arjun, and produced jointly by T-Series and Bhadrakali Pictures.^[9]