Brands
Carrefour ropes in retail veteran to build India business from scratch
BENAGLURU: Carrefour has hired Saurabh Bansal as chief merchandising officer to spearhead the French retailer’s India launch, nabbing a veteran who just pulled off the rare feat of making Spencer’s Retail profitable for the first time in 22 quarters.
Bansal, who joined Carrefour in September after two years as executive director at Spencer’s, is tasked with building the hypermarket chain’s Indian operations from ground zero. His exit comes months after he steered Spencer’s to EBITDA profitability in the third quarter of fiscal 2024-25—a milestone the struggling retailer hadn’t touched since early 2019.
The 46-year-old has spent two decades hopscotching through India’s chaotic retail landscape, from Metro Cash and Carry to Walmart, with pit stops at Snapdeal and Lenskart. At Walmart, he juggled six mandates simultaneously, overseeing everything from staples and fresh produce to private labels and pricing strategy. His Snapdeal stint saw him lead the entire company’s profit-and-loss statement before the e-commerce firm’s fortunes nosedived.
Bansal cut his teeth at Spencer’s between 2006 and 2008, launching private labels and opening stores across India, before returning in 2023 to rescue the business. He also logged three years at Metro, where he opened two stores in north India and led the wholesale giant’s general merchandise expansion.
Carrefour’s India gambit comes as foreign retailers struggle to crack a market dominated by nimble local chains and deep-pocketed e-commerce giants. The French group exited India once before, selling its stake in a joint venture in 2014 after failing to make headway. This time round, it’s betting that Bansal’s track record of wringing profits from loss-making retailers will translate. History suggests otherwise, but hope springs eternal.
Brands
Tessolve lands a semiconductor veteran to drive its next big push
Ravi Kumar Chirugudu, who started his career at ISRO and has spent 35 years building chips and companies, joins the Bengaluru-based firm as president and chief operating officer
BENGALURU: Tessolve has never been shy about its ambitions. The Bengaluru-based engineering services firm already counts 18 of the world’s top 20 semiconductor companies among its clients, employs more than 3,500 engineers across 12 countries, and last year pocketed a $150m investment from TPG. Now it has hired the executive it believes can turn those assets into something bigger. Ravi Kumar Chirugudu, a 35-year semiconductor veteran who once built satellite payloads for ISRO and has since scaled engineering organisations across three continents, joins as president and chief operating officer, effective immediately.
THE MAN AND THE MANDATE
The appointment is, by any measure, a serious hire. Ravi Kumar Chirugudu comes to Tessolve after senior leadership stints at HCL Technologies, Altran and Wipro, where he managed large profit-and-loss portfolios and oversaw cross-regional teams. Over the course of his career, he has been instrumental in bringing more than 1,000 new products to market across the high-tech, energy and manufacturing verticals. Before the private sector claimed him, he began his working life as a scientist at the Indian Space Research Organisation, contributing to research and development in charge-coupled device technology and satellite payloads, a foundation that shaped everything that followed.
In his new role, he will lead Tessolve’s global growth strategy: expanding its engineering capabilities, deepening customer relationships and accelerating innovation across semiconductor and high-performance computing domains. The brief is broad, but the context is specific. Tessolve operates in the $550 billion global semiconductor market, and its recent moves, the acquisition of Germany’s Dream Chip Technologies and the TPG funding round, have sharpened both its reach and its expectations.
Srini Chinamilli, co-founder and chief executive of Tessolve, is characteristically direct about why Ravi Kumar Chirugudu was the choice:
“As we scale our global semiconductor and system engineering capabilities, Ravi’s appointment marks an important step forward. As global semiconductor demand continues to accelerate across industries, it is creating significant opportunities across the semiconductor lifecycle, from design, packaging, validation and systems integration. Ravi’s deep knowledge and leadership in this ecosystem brings the right mix of industry expertise, customer connect and execution capability, which will play a key role in strengthening our position as a trusted global engineering partner and reinforcing our market leadership.”
THE NEW ARRIVAL SPEAKS
Ravi Kumar Chirugudu, for his part, frames the move in terms of timing and culture, two factors that veteran executives tend to weigh as heavily as title or compensation:
“I am happy to join Tessolve at a time when the industry is rapidly evolving towards more complex, AI-driven systems. What stands out to me is its strong people-first culture and its commitment to bringing value to its customers. The strength of its global team, combined with its deep expertise in semiconductor innovation and next-generation product engineering, creates a solid foundation to build differentiated, scalable solutions. I look forward to working closely with the team to drive strategic growth and strengthen its role in shaping the global semiconductor ecosystem.”
The reference to AI-driven systems is not incidental. The semiconductor industry is in the midst of a structural reshaping, driven by the insatiable compute demands of artificial intelligence. For engineering services firms like Tessolve, which offers end-to-end capabilities from silicon design to packaged parts and invests in high-performance computing, high-speed interfaces, photonics and 5G, the moment is both an opportunity and a test. The company says it is well positioned to capture the next wave of industry growth. Ravi Kumar Chirugudu is now the person who has to prove it.
He came in from outer space, literally, and spent three decades learning how the semiconductor industry works from the inside out. Now Tessolve is betting that accumulated knowledge can help it cross the next frontier. In the $550 billion global chip market, the gap between ambition and execution is measured in engineering hours and leadership quality. Tessolve has just gone shopping for both.
