MAM
FCB/SIX India appoints Gagan Prabhakar as VP – CX operations and Arun Iyer as Sr. director – CRM
Mumbai: FCB/SIX India has appointed Gagan Prabhakar and Arun Iyer as VP – CX Operations and Sr. Director – CRM, respectively.
In his new role at the agency, Gagan will lead CRM, web strategy, and content verticals.
Arun, on the other hand, will be responsible for leading the development and implementation of personalisation, and data-backed strategies, and managing the CRM team for delivering omnichannel customer experiences for FCB/SIX India’s clients.
Gagan moved from Dhani Stocks, where he was the general manager of marketing, whereas Arun was the lead strategy consultant at Mirum India.
With over 17 years of experience, Gagan has also worked with HDFC Bank, Indiabulls Group and most recently Dhani Stocks. Arun comes with over a decade of experience and has been associated with companies like Mirum India and The Walt Disney Company.
Speaking on the new hires, FCB/SIX India, CBO Ankit Banga said, “At FCB/SIX India, we understand the power that creativity, data, and technology together possess in delivering an exceptional customer experience. The inclusion of Gagan and Arun strengthens our CX division, enriching it with their data proficiency and extensive experience in large-scale CRM campaigns across finance, healthcare, and the QSR sectors. Additionally, we’re enhancing our Salesforce capabilities to better serve a significant portion of our clientele.”
FCB Kinnect and FCB/SIX India CEO Rohan Mehta added, “Welcoming Gagan and Arun aboard will synergise creativity and technology, bringing exceptional customer experiences (CX) across all our client offerings, to further strengthen our focus on using ‘creativity as an economic multiplier’.”
FCB/SIX India VP – CX Operations Gagan Prabhakar said, “I’m thrilled to be part of FCB/SIX India and FCB Kinnect and I believe in the company’s philosophy of Growth, Glory, and Guts. I’m confident that by leveraging a data-centric approach and our innovative solutions across web verticals, we can help our clients achieve significant growth in the digital landscape.”
FCB/SIX India Sr. director – CRM Arun Iyer said, “I’m all geared up to join FCB/SIX India and leverage my passion for data-driven strategies, to build meaningful customer relationships and drive business results. Given the agency’s culture of innovation, I look forward to pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, ensuring we continue to set new benchmarks for excellence in connecting brands with their audiences in the most impactful ways.”
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.
