MAM
Online advertising in the US will reach $11 billion this year
MUMBAI: The internet in the US is increasingly becoming a useful platform for marketers to reach consumers. eMarketer reports that while paid search advertising will grow 22.5 per cent in 2005, spending on non-search advertising, including rich media, online display ads and sponsorships, will rise by 20 per cent.
In total, online advertising will reach $11.3 billion in 2005. Ford’s Lincoln Mercury division is putting 25 per cent of its 2005 marketing budget online, and Vonage spends over 50 per cent of its marketing dollars on the Internet. In order to help companies understand better how they can leverage the online medium as an advertising and marketing tool Strategic Research Institute and eMarketer will conduct the eMarketing 2005 forum in Orlando, Florida on 19 and 20 May 2005.
At the forum companies representing a wide variety of categories will seek to advance their online marketing strategies. They include GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Toyota Motor Sales, Hewlett Packard and AOL Media Works. The forum will uncover the latest trends and techniques in online marketing strategies.
In the sesion titled The Big Picture eMarketer CEO Geoffrey Ramsey will cut through the hype, misinformation and contradictory research data to provide a big picture view of where online marketing is today, and where it’s going in the near future. Drawing upon aggregated data from dozens of leading research firms, and pulling no punches, Geoffrey will walk attendees the stats and trends you need to know, including online demographics and usage patterns, Internet shopping and buying, the growing adoption of broadband and wireless technologies and the Internet’s unique and increasingly powerful role in the marketing mix.
Hewlett-Packard VP Interactive Communications – Global Brand Advertising Mary Bermel will deliver another keynote address. When the consumer is in charge how do marketers seize new opportunities in online marketing. New technologies clearly pose increased challenges to marketers. The “digital revolution” demands increased creativity in connecting with customers. Bermel will dwell on how brands are discovering new tools and strategies to come closer to their customers.
The Internet has heightened choices for the customer and has empowered them with lots of new choices. The challnge for marketers is keeping up with the new demands on product choices, retail options, marketing and media preferences and brand-building.
Another session will predict online ad spending growth, overall and by the specific ad format. It will look at the strategies and techniques that successful advertisers using to fully exploit the interactive channel as well as the mistakes they are avoiding.
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.
