MAM
Leo Burnett India elevates Sonal Chhajerh and Pravin Sutar as national creative directors
Mumbai: Leo Burnett India, part of Publicis Groupe India, has announced the elevation of Sonal Chhajerh and Pravin Sutar as national creative directors. In their previous roles with the agency, Sonal was group executive creative director and Pravin was head of creative, Leo Burnett Bangalore. Both will continue reporting to Rajdeepak Das, chief creative officer, Publicis Groupe, South Asia & chairman Leo Burnett South Asia.
Leo Burnett India stands for modern, transformational creativity that powers growth for brands and businesses. As the agency strengthens its creative leadership, these elevations mark the commitment to world-class creativity and technology, innovative new-age thinking and holistic, high-impact business solutions that strengthen brands.
On the promotions, Leo Burnett South Asia chief creative officer, Publicis Groupe, South Asia & chairman Rajdeepak Das said “At Burnett, we truly believe the driving factor for success is our people and culture. Over the past few years, Sonal and Pravin have gone above and beyond their designated roles to contribute to the success of Leo Burnett. And I am thrilled that they are now stepping in as co-pilots to our already strong creative leadership helmed by Sachin Kamble and Vikram Pandey as chief creative officers.
Sonal has the creative vision to help empower brands with our ‘Impact a Billion’ thinking. Pravin has been relentlessly working towards shaping our Bangalore office into a formidable force with his creative acumen and leadership skills. Together as National Creative Directors Sonal and Pravin will be uniquely placed to leverage their collective experience and creative vision to unlock creative effectiveness for both our brands and our people.”
Commenting on the leadership changes, Leo Burnett Publicis health & publicis business CEO of South Asia Amitesh Rao shares, “This has been a phenomenal year for us at Leo Burnett. And Sonal and Pravin have been a big part of our success story. Both are true representation of Leo Burnett, respected and admired by our clients, our partners, and our people. Their elevation will add more depth and value to our agency’s creative output and further accentuate our focus on solving business and human problems using creativity, innovation, data, and technology.”
Talking about his appointment, Pravin Sutar, National Creative Director, Leo Burnett India said, “Leo Burnett is right at the centre when it comes to creativity and innovation in the country. I’m really excited with the opportunity presented to me by Raj and Amitesh and am committed to finding fresh avenues and platforms to express ideas while preserving our unique Leo Burnett culture. And with the team we’ve built over the past few years, we’re more than ready to undertake this journey.”
Adding further about her appointment Leo Burnett India’s national creative director Sonal Chhajerh said, “I am excited to step into this role and build on the vision and outstanding progress we have achieved as an agency over the past few years. I truly believe that the future of advertising is using creativity as a force for good —impacting billions of lives through innovation and sustainability. I am thankful to Raj and Amitesh for trusting me with this responsibility and am looking forward to collaborating with colleagues and our brand partners to create work that is truly world-class, scalable, and makes a real difference.”
Sonal Chhajerh was until recently the Group Executive Creative Director at Leo Burnett Mumbai. She is passionate about working on impact projects that deliver genuine change for clients and society at large. She leads the P&G Whisper account and was instrumental in the ‘Missing Chapter’ campaign which is one of the agency’s most acclaimed and awarded works. Pravin has been heading the creative in Leo Burnett Bangalore and has been instrumental in strengthening the Leo Burnett Bangalore offerings by managing the large portfolio of some of the biggest brands including Ikea, ACKO, RedBus, Kingfisher, Heineken, and Lenovo, to name a few.
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.
