Brands
Allied Blenders & Distillers appoints two marketing directors
MUMBAI: Allied Blenders & Distillers Ltd has announced the appointment of Arvind Hangal and Roshni Chatterjee as marketing directors with immediate effect from 6 March 2025.
The board of directors approved both appointments, with the executives designated as senior management personnel of the company.
Hangal has been with Allied Blenders since November 2011. He holds a bachelor of science degree from the university of Mumbai and a master’s in management studies in marketing from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies. Before joining Allied Blenders, he served as category manager at Novartis India.
Chatterjee brings over 18 years of experience across FMCG and B2B sectors in the Asia-Pacific region. Her career spans roles at major consumer goods companies including Unilever, Kraft, and Heinz. Most recently, she served as global head of brand and communications at Sleek Tech in Singapore.
Her track record includes successfully leading brand turnarounds for Vaseline in Thailand and Indonesia. While at Kraft Heinz, Chatterjee spearheaded the company’s expansion into the snacking segment across the APAC region and developed the strategy for India’s market turnaround.
Allied Blenders & Distillers is one of India’s leading spirits manufacturers, with the appointments reflecting the company’s commitment to strengthening its marketing leadership.
Brands
Google nears Nvidia in race for world’s most valuable company
Market cap gap narrows as Google hits $4.65 trillion, Nvidia at $4.86 trillion.
MUMBAI: In the AI gold rush, even the giants are sprinting and Google is suddenly gaining ground. Google is rapidly closing in on Nvidia in the race to become the world’s most valuable publicly listed company, with the gap between the two narrowing sharply amid diverging stock momentum. The tech giant’s market capitalisation has surged to around $4.65 trillion, following a more than 140 per cent rise in its share price over the past year.
That rally has added over $2.6 trillion in value in just 12 months, including nearly $900 billion since January alone. Its stock recently hovered at $381.80, slipping marginally by 0.04 per cent, but still reflecting strong upward momentum.
Nvidia, meanwhile, continues to hold the top spot with a valuation of approximately $4.86 trillion. The chipmaker crossed the $5 trillion milestone in October last year and peaked at $5.27 trillion on 27 April. However, its shares have largely plateaued over the past six months, rising just 0.2 per cent recently to $199.99.
The contrast in trajectories is striking. While Nvidia has seen relatively flat movement, Google has gained over 36 per cent in the same six-month period. Barron’s estimates suggest that if current trends hold, the valuation gap could shrink to as little as $190 million by the time Nvidia reports its first-quarter earnings on 20 May.
Daily momentum paints a similar picture. Nvidia recorded average daily gains of about 0.66 per cent last month, compared to Google’s stronger 1.42 per cent, an edge that could prove decisive in the short term.
Driving Google’s resurgence is its aggressive push into artificial intelligence across its ecosystem, from search and YouTube to cloud computing. The company has already invested $144 billion in capital expenditure over the past two years and plans to deploy a further $490 billion over the next two.
Its cloud division is also gathering pace. Google Cloud reported an order backlog of nearly $220 billion in the latest quarter, with total backlog touching a record $462 billion, around half of which is expected to be realised within two years. The company’s entry into chip sales is also beginning to factor into its growth narrative.
The last time Google briefly topped the S&P 500 by market value was in February 2016, when it edged past Apple for just two days. This time, the stakes and the numbers are far higher.
At the heart of the contest lies a single force: artificial intelligence. As both companies pour billions into infrastructure, chips and platforms, the leaderboard is no longer just about size, it is about who can scale the future faster.
