[3] This came out exactly one hundred years after a Kannada-English dictionary was authored by the German priest and Indologist Reverend Ferdinand Kittel in 1894.

This work became an addition to a tradition of dictionary writing in Kannada known for at least thousand years starting with first available Rannakanda.

By the early 1930s, Venkatasubbiah's family relocated to city of Mysore where he joined Yuvaraja college for his intermediate course where he came under the influence of K. V. Puttappa (Kuvempu).

During these years, Venkatasubbiah inspired his friend and colleague Ramachandra Sharma to publish his collection of Kannada poetry in a book form.

He was actively involved in the Mysore University Academic Council and Private College Teachers' Association during these years.

[10] In 1998, he was appointed an advisor to the multilingual dictionary project of the Institute of Asian Studies, Chennai, which comprises Japanese, Kannada, English and Tamil.

Numerous felicitation volumes have been brought forth in honour of Venkatasubbiah's contribution to the world of Kannada literature and lexicography.

In 2011, he was presented with a felicitation volume Vidvajeevita which was a collection of articles authored by writers from South Canara region of Karnataka and edited by Dr. Padekallu Vishnubhatta.

Venkatasubbiah at the age of 102 years was the presiding guest of honour at the book launch of Srikanthayana Archived 12 August 2020 at the Wayback Machine - collection of writings in English on subjects related to History, Indology and Archaeology by his teacher S. Srikanta Sastri in 2016.