MAM
Booked for glory as Crossword Awards crown India’s finest storytellers
MUMBAI: Literature took centre stage and stole the spotlight in Mumbai as the 19th Crossword Book Awards unfurled a night stacked with prose, pride and page-turning brilliance. And leading the celebration was a standing ovation for the formidable Shanta Gokhale, who received the coveted Lifetime Achievement Award becoming only the fifth luminary to join a club that counts Ruskin Bond, Sudha Murty, Shashi Tharoor and Amitav Ghosh among its members.
The award was presented by close friend and veteran journalist Bachi Karkaria, who lauded Gokhale’s towering influence across Marathi literature, theatre criticism and translation, calling her a cultural force who has “enriched Indian literature at large.”
The evening, held at The LaLit Mumbai on 3 December 2025, showcased the breadth of Indian storytelling today from a 920-page deep dive into 1940s Calcutta to a probing study of modern Hindu identity. The Jury Awards reflected that sweep, recognising:
● Fiction: Great Eastern Hotel by Ruchir Joshi
● Non-fiction: Gods, Guns and Missionaries by Manu S. Pillai
● Business & Management: Just a Mercenary? by Duvvuri Subbarao
● Children’s Books: The Wall Friends Club by Varsha Seshan, illustrated by Denise Antao
● Translations: The Day the Earth Bloomed by Manoj Kuroor, translated by J. Devika
With 15 jurors across five categories, several including Vaishna Roy, Mandira Nayar, Poonam Saxena, Deepak Dalal, Sonu Bhasin and Sruthijith KK—took the stage to present the awards.
If the Jury Awards spoke to craft, the Popular Choice Awards revealed the nation’s heart. Reader votes crowned titles that sparked conversations across the country, including:
● Fiction: Too Good To Be True by Prajakta Koli
● Non-fiction: Shah Rukh Khan by Mohar Basu
● Children’s Books: Grandpa’s Bag of Stories by Sudha Murty
● Business & Management: Ratan Tata by Thomas Mathew
● Mind, Body & Spirit: Enlightenment by Sadhguru
Celebrating the diverse winners, Crossword Bookstores CEO Aakash Gupta said, “The range and depth recognised this year is truly thrilling. These books will spark conversations, shape perspectives and inspire a generation of readers.”
Adding to the sentiment Crossword Bookstores director Nidhi Gupta shared, “Tonight reminded us of the enduring magic of storytelling. These works open windows into worlds we may never otherwise encounter.”
The ceremony drew a constellation of authors and industry leaders, including shortlisted names Prahalad Kakkar, Roopa Pai, Anand Neelakantan and Arunava Sinha, along with prominent attendees Anupama Chopra, Ambi Parmeswaran and Suvir Saran.
Established in 1998, the Crossword Book Awards continue to stand as one of India’s most consistent literary benchmarks championing English-language writing, elevating new voices and mirroring the evolving pulse of Indian storytelling. With its 2025 edition, the awards once again offered readers a definitive guide to the year’s most compelling books and the writers shaping the country’s literary future.
As the final applause faded, one thing was clear: Indian literature is not just thriving, it’s rewriting its own story, one award-winning page at a time.
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.
