MAM
Bright Outdoor outdoes itself in FY25
MUMBAI: The lights are definitely on and someone’s at home at Bright Outdoor Media. India’s first listed out-of-home advertising firm has delivered a corker of a year, with total income soaring 19 per cent to Rs 128 crore and net profit jumping nearly 19 per cent to Rs 19 crore in the fiscal year ending March 2025.
The numbers tell a gleaming story. Earnings per share climbed to Rs 13.11 from Rs 11.45, whilst EBITDA expanded a healthy 18 per cent to Rs 27 crore. The second half proved particularly bright, with income surging 22 per cent half-on-half to Rs 70 crore—suggesting the company’s momentum is accelerating rather than dimming.
For a firm that started life in 1980 flogging billboard space, Bright Outdoor has certainly illuminated its path to prosperity. The Mumbai-based outfit now commands over 400 hoardings nationwide, including a hefty chunk of the city’s 85 large digital LED displays. That’s no small feat in a market where prime real estate comes at a premium and visibility is everything.
The company’s recent coups read like a property developer’s wishlist. Bright Outdoor has bagged exclusive advertising rights for the entire Navi Mumbai Metro Line 1—a decade-long deal covering 85,000 square feet of prime eyeball territory. Not content with underground domination, it also secured a seven-year contract with Western Railways, adding another 17,555 square feet of high-visibility real estate to its empire.
Chairman & managing director Yogesh Lakhani is clearly more than pleased with the results. His company has been on a billboard-buying spree, unveiling 13 new LED displays across Mumbai’s most coveted spots—from the Goregaon flyover to the Eastern Express Highway. The digital expansion adds 12,569 square feet of advertising space to Bright’s already impressive portfolio.
Shareholders have reason to smile beyond the robust financials. The board has recommended a five per cent dividend (Rs 0.50 per share) and proposed a generous 1:2 bonus issue—one free share for every two held. It’s a clear signal that management believes the good times will keep rolling.
The outdoor advertising market has been riding high on India’s economic growth and urbanisation boom. Digital displays, in particular, have become the new battleground as advertisers seek more dynamic, targeted campaigns. Bright Outdoor’s focus on high-traffic transit corridors and tech-savvy solutions appears to be paying dividends—quite literally.
From cinema slides to full train wraps, the company’s diverse offerings have attracted over 5,000 corporate clients and facilitated campaigns for more than 200,000 movies, TV shows and events. Its claim to fame includes being the first globally to install solar panels on hoardings, supplying electricity back to Indian Railways—proof that being green can indeed mean more greenbacks.
Trading on the BSE SME platform since March 2023, Bright Outdoor has certainly lived up to its billing as a “game changer” in the IPO landscape. With urban India’s appetite for advertising showing no signs of dimming, this billboard baron looks set to keep the lights on—and the profits flowing.
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.
