Brands
‘Awsum’ idea: Immunity booster chocolate brand launches in India
Mumbai: Amid the Covid2019 pandemic, with people going gaga over immunity boosters, here’s a new one – now, chocolates made of Ayurvedic herbs and botanicals to boost your immunity.
Designed to help the urban working millennials deal with their modern-day lifestyle disorders, Pranav Sharma and Kritik Thakur have launched India’s first functional chocolate brand, Awsum – a first of its kind chocolate brand which uses Ayurvedic principles to make products healthier without compromising on taste. Awsum uses the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda and combines it with premium dark and milk chocolate to create exciting products that come with functional benefits.
Functional chocolate as a category is very new and novel for the Indian markets with no similar brands available in the same space. These chocolates are packed with herbs and nutrients that help the body to deal with modern-day lifestyle health disorders and are very relevant for the current scenario where we are all dealing with a pandemic like Covid, the brand said in a press release. The chocolates have a rich and smooth texture and do not come at a compromise of taste.
Awsum has launched four variants to start off with: Daily Energy, Sleep, Goodbye Stress, and Active Immunity.
“The mission of the brand is to inspire lifelong healthy habits by bringing simplicity, inspiration and delight to the world of supplements and nutraceuticals. These functional chocolates immensely help you to fight and deal with modern-day lifestyle problems- from sleep deprivation to stress and anxiety,” said Awsum co-founders, Pranav Sharma and Kritik Thakur.
The idea of Awsum was conceived in the backdrop of nationwide lockdown declared by the government last year in 2020 when the co-founders themselves grappled with problems such as sleep deprivation, day time lethargy, and anxiety. And their own experience led to the creation of the brand that aims to help people deal with these problems in a more convenient and palatable way.
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.
