Brands
Engineered to Impress as Liebherr Privé Redraws India’s Luxury Blueprint
MUMBAI: Luxury in India has finally traded the glitter for the gears and Liebherr Privé made sure everyone noticed. In an evening where design met discipline and innovation met intention, Liebherr Appliances India and Network18 unveiled an invite-only showcase that signalled a bold shift, luxury that thinks before it shines. The night opened on a note as rich as its theme Purbayan Chatterjee’s sitar weaving a meditative calm through a room filled with global leaders, architects, innovators, and cultural tastemakers. It set the stage for a celebration not of excess, but of intelligence, engineering, and human-centred design.
Network18’s anchor welcomed guests before Liebherr Appliances India MD of sales Kapil Agarwal framed the agenda: a commitment to precision engineering, sustainability-led design and products built for the way India lives, evolves, and aspires. “Innovation is not about complexity; it’s about purpose,” Kapil said, emphasising how design aligned with real human needs can elevate daily life rather than merely ornament it.
At the heart of the evening was the Liebherr Foundational Fireside, a sharply insightful exchange featuring Steffen Nagel and Roman Schäfer in conversation with CNBC-TV18’s Manisha Gupta. Together, they unpacked Liebherr’s legacy of uncompromising build quality, intelligent technology, and long-term commitment to India, a market they described as “growing at a speed no other market can match.”
Steffen set the tone: “Innovation for us is embedded in our DNA… whether it is quality, functionality or sustainability, we see it as our responsibility to create products that add value while ensuring the next generation inherits a better world.” Roman echoed the sentiment, noting, “We don’t copy-paste Europe for India; it is with India, for India, and now from India to the world. The future of luxury is not loud, it is seamless.”
The conversation seamlessly expanded into real estate and lifestyle, with a special fireside conversation featuring HoAL chairman Abhinandan Lodha. Under the theme “From Square Feet to Smart Living,” Lodha explored how engineering-led innovation is reshaping luxury homes. “India’s luxury consumer is younger, sharper and demanding real quality,” he said, highlighting HoAL’s data-driven approach powered by 1,45,000 verified insights. “Sustainability costs more, but it’s our duty to the next generation.”
The showcase then moved into a high-energy panel on the future of evolving homes, gathering voices from architecture, interiors, arts, and design including Rajiv Mishra, Sumisha Gilotra, Brinda Miller, Nisha JamVwal and Neelam Sonavane. The discussion painted a vivid picture of how culture, functionality, and emotional resonance are redefining Indian homes.
But the evening’s most anticipated moment belonged to the powerhouse duo Sussanne Khan and Farah Khan Ali. Their conversation, “Designing Modern Luxury Where innovation meets personal expression,” blended vulnerability, vision, and wit. Sussanne said, “Modern luxury is a marriage of technology and emotion: a home with a heart and a brain.” From artisanal craft to smart automation, from eco-materials to soulful storytelling, she outlined a design philosophy deeply rooted in warmth, creativity and intuition.
As India steps confidently into an era of intelligent, future-ready living, Liebherr Privé stood as more than a curated evening, it became a manifesto. A reminder that the next chapter of luxury will be engineered, intentional and quietly extraordinary. A world where timeless craftsmanship meets intelligent technology, and where design doesn’t just decorate life, it deepens it.
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.
