After working as an assistant director for several years to P. Vasu, Manivannan and Rajasekar, Nandakumar successfully pitched the story of Kodiesvaran to the producer K. T.

[1] The film opened to mixed reviews, with a critic from The Hindu noting, "Thennavan would have been a tailor made story for Vijayakanth but for the flawed script, clichéd dialogue and unappealing caricatures.

[10] A critic from Sify noted, "This film is a slapdash enterprise that will make you groan," adding "It caters strictly to B and C class audiences and leaves you cold.

"[11] Another reviewer noted the similarity to Baashha (1995) adding "the quality of these remakes has ranged from entertaining to outright bad and Prashanth's Jaambavan unfortunately comes in at the lower end of that scale".

[13] In 2014, Nandakumar made Kalkandu and the film gained media attention before release, owing to the lead actor Gajesh's debut.

[16] It had a limited release in October 2014, owing to the presence of bigger budget films at the box office, and opened to mixed reviews with a critics noting it "gets stuck towards average".