Dantuluri Narayana Raju College was established in 1945, before Indian Independence, and was an offshoot of the National movement and renaissance thinking. Being agrarian, the Godavari region had been kept out of the higher academic activities in the pre- independence period.
Sri Dantuluri Narayana Raju, a freedom fighter, an activist and a visionary wanted to provide the uneducated rural masses with the hither to unthinkable and unreachable source for their overall development and welfare i.e. higher education. That visionary, with the help of limited number of committed lieutenants and Philanthropists, strived hard with a missionary zeal and realized the establishment of a college at Bhimavaram, known as West Godavari Bhimavaram (W.G.B) College in 1945. In 1964 it was renamed as Datuluri Narayana raju (D.N.R) College in memory of its founder.