Krushi which was dubbed into Russian and was screened at the Moscow International Film Festival. Chiranjeevi won the 1988 Cinema Express Best Actor Award and the state Nandi Award for Best Actor awards for his performance in the film. In the same year, Chiranjeevi was one of the Indian delegates at the 59th Academy Awards.In 1988, he co-produced Rudraveena which won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration. He is one of the co-owners of the Indian Super League club Kerala Blasters FC.
Chiranjeevi's 1992 film Gharana Mogudu, directed by K. Raghavendra Rao, is the first Telugu film to gross over ₹10 crore at the box office. The film was screened at the 1993 International Film Festival of India in the mainstream section. It made Chiranjeevi the highest-paid actor in India at the time catapulting him to the cover pages of national weekly magazines in India. The entertainment magazines Filmfare and India Today named him 'Bigger than Bachchan', a reference to Bollywood's Amitabh Bachchan. News magazine The Week hailed him as 'the new money machine' He was paid a remuneration of ₹1.25 crore for the 1992 film Aapadbandh.