Brands
77% consumers buy brands with similar values
MUMBAI: Havas Group in its Meaningful Brands 2019 report has revealed that a staggering 77 per cent of brands could disappear and no-one would care. Not only is this the highest percentage since Meaningful Brands® research began in 2008, this is a major three-point hike on the Meaningful Brands 2019 results.
Meaningful Brands is a a far-reaching, global study created by Havas Group of 1800 brands, in 31 countries, with 350,000 respondents, and which links brand performance to quality of life and wellbeing.
The report also notes that brands, which are meaningful and viewed as making the world a better place, are outperforming the stock market by 134 per cent and seeing their share of wallet multiply by 9. These brands also lock-in greater returns on KPIs, like 24 points more for purchase intent and 39 points for advocacy.
“Amid political turmoil, consumers are using their buying power to make a stand. 55 per cent of consumers believe brands actually have a more important role than our governments to create a better future. Buying today is a political act, and the power of consumers to impact change is greater than ever,” reads the report.
Havas Group chief insights officer and Vivendi SVP brand marketing Maria Garrido noted, “There is no doubt about it. Being meaningful is good for business! Our findings show that consumers will reward brands who want to make the world a better place and who reflect their values. A massive 77 per cent of consumers prefer to buy from companies who share their values. Brand activism will become a crucial part of a brand’s strategy.”
Havas Group chairman and CEO Yannick Bolloré commented, “Meaningful Brands 2019 reveals that meaningful brands outperform the stock market by 134 per cent. Brands really need to meaningfully engage with their audience to drive business.”
The report also noted that there is a 72 per cent correlation between content effectiveness and a brand’s impact on personal wellbeing. However, the content from brands is falling massively short of consumer expectations. It states, “While 90 per cent of consumers expect brands to provide content, more than half the content from brands is not meaningful to consumers, drowned out by content noise, including 473 000 tweets sent and 4 million videos watched on YouTube, every minute.”
Vivendi Brand Marketing global director of meaningful insights Barbara Marx warned “Brands are missing out on real opportunities to create content that cuts through the clutter and connects to better engage with audiences through entertainment, events and other content-led activations. 58 per cent of content created by the world’s leading 1800 brands is poor, irrelevant and fails to deliver. It’s simply not meaningful to consumers.”
The report also revealed the names of top ten performing Meaningful Brands as Google, PayPal, Mercedes-Benz, WhatsApp, YouTube, Johnson & Johnson, Gillette, BMW, Microsoft, and Danone.
Retail, electronics, and food were named as the top three most meaningful industries for Western Europe. Compared to food, automotive and transport for Eastern Europe and consumer goods, food and entertainment for North America.
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.
