Hailing from Madurai, South India, Nayagam was originally an industrialist, making soaps and perfumes at factories both in Madurai and Ceylon. With the flourishing of Indian cinema in the 1940s, he established his own cinema company, Sri Murugan Navakala Limited, named after the Hindu deity Murugan. The company was based in Madurai, owning a studio (Chitrakala Movietone) at Thiruparankundram.
Nayagam's first venture into film was the 1946 Tamil language film Kumaraguru, directed by Bengali director Jothish Sinha. His second film, a patriotic film entitled Thaai Nadu, was also in Tamil, being released on the day of India's independence
