MAM
Mi teams up with Baba Sehgal for Diwali campaign
NEW DELHI: Smartphone brand Xiaomi ‘Mi’ has teamed up with rapper and musician Harjeet Singh Sehgal, popularly known as Baba Sehgal, for its festive season campaign ‘Diwali with Mi’.
Baba Sehgal stars in a rap video for the mobile maker. What’s interesting about the clip is that vice president & MD of Mi India Manu Kumar Jain is seen shaking a leg and going head-to-head with Sehgal in a battle of rhymes. In the video, Baba Sehgal says, “Ye hai Manu, mai hu Baba, Bhook lagi hai, let’s go to dhaba. (This is Manu, I am Baba, We’re hungry, Let’s Go to Dhaba.)”
Jain’s unexpected performance is what makes it for fans of Mi, who cheered the MD for stepping out of his comfort zone and sportingly participating in the video.
In a LinkedIn post, Jain said: “What’s the role of a CEO? Building new businesses, making long term business plans, building the best possible team, motivating the team to perform the best, creating more leaders? But at #XiaomiIndia, I need to do all of the above and also sing and dance.”
Jain added that he was convinced by his team to shoot the video and he’s glad for the experience.
Baba Sehgal and Jain’s double act has proved to be a hit with netizens. Some hailed Jain’s “tremendous energy” and creativity by doing something different and pleasantly surprising the brand’s customers. Others said the campaign was a breakaway from “the stereotypical image of a CEO” and reflected a rich life "beyond the board meetings, PPTs and excel sheets."
By leveraging the power of social media, Xiaomi is promoting its Diwali campaign and connecting with the masses. Already a renowned name in the Indian smartphone market, the brand clearly knows how to strike a chord with the consumers, as this ad campaign shows.
BABA is in the house!
Fanboy moment for me when @OnlyBabaSehgal joined our all-hands to interact with our team!Welcome to @XiaomiIndia family Baba.
Have you listened to his #DiwaliWithMi song? Glad that #Diwali has started with such a Dhamaka!
I Mi #BabaSehgal pic.twitter.com/gYkb2qb2nh
— Manu Kumar Jain (@manukumarjain) October 16, 2020
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.
