[5] From a young age, he was influenced by the diversity of language and culture that was around him, specifically Sufi music, Catholic church services, and the temple bhajans.

Rao believes that this diversity has enhanced the process of receiving knowledge from any linguistic source rather easy.

Rao had to attend high school and college 20 km away from home and would travel using the public bus service.

It is here that Rao learnt and practiced new methods of learning, using the libraries of TIFR (Institute of Science, Bombay) and AEET's Chemistry Division extensively.

During this time, he also came in close association with S. S. Dharmatti, A. K. Ganguly, Raja Ramanna, PR Dastidar and many more eminent personalities.

In 1968 and as a part of the small team to do so, he moved to Hyderabad from BARC to set up the Electronics Corporation of India.

After a short stint, he found the place difficult and went to start a semiconductor activity of his own in Dharwar manufacturing silicon controlled rectifiers.

Dharwar exposed Rao to diverse fields of knowledge and enabled him to form a friendship with literature enthusiasts and writers.

This was where he met Dr. Shankar Mokashi Punekar and his assistance in writing the book on Indus Valley Seals is mentioned in the Preface of the book[6] Rao found refuge in the Tata Press limited, Bombay as a service engineer of electronics equipment and innovative use of electronic printing equipment.[when?]

Tata Press purchased a digital font based typesetting machine from Alpha Type, a Chicago-based electronics company.

One of the first tasks assigned in Tata Press was a solution to the problem of creating a font of Indus Valley Seal Symbols for a typesetting machine.

[7] Rao joined Monotype, a British firm known in the field of printing as the pioneer of mechanized type and automated composition.[when?]

The laser comp was adapted to set Indian scripts and the phonetic input system was developed.

In the 1980s, K.P Rao provided a keyboard layout to Dr.Srinivasan, Canada, who had developed an editor for DOS to type Kannada.

The ambitious Tulu lexicon project of the Govinda Pai regional resources center at Udupi was to bring out the text in many volumes of print.