Brands
Oppo to go full steam ahead this festive season
MUMBAI: Chinese smart phone maker Oppo Mobiles is getting into overdrive mode this festive season.
The brand, which has tapped into the tendency of Indian youth (18-35 years) to take selfies and positioned itself as the selfie expert, commands a 24.2 per cent market share of the Rs 15,000 – Rs 30,000 segment category (as per Counterpoint Q2 2017 data). And, it is hoping to up that share further in Q3 2017.
It is introducing a new phone, dropping prices of an earlier version, launching a new TVC featuring Indian cricketers, and continuing its massive media investment in Colors marquee shows like Big Boss and Kaun Banega Crorepati in its latest season.
First the launch. In an Amazon online exclusive, Oppo is unveiling a Oppo F3 Diwali limited edition phone in festive red color with a sticker price of Rs 18,990 on 29 September. The phone will also be available on all Oppo offline stores across India and comes preloaded with festive themes and wallpapers.
Says Oppo India brand director Will Yang: “This customised red phone, a colour that signifies the auspicious festivities, aims to help our consumers click perfect moments with their families and make this a preferred Diwali gift.”
The brand has positioned the product as the best Diwali gift one can gift or buy. In order to lure more consumers into snapping up the new handset, Oppo will give away exclusive cricket bats signed by the Indian cricket team with each purchase of the F3. Oppo says it will also be announcing a price cut for its earlier model F3 Plus in the coming weeks.
Yang believes that the new offering very much resonates with Oppo’s target audience: young people who are always looking for a fashionable smartphone. Says he: “In order to connect with today’s digital savvy generation or millennials as we call them, we continue to invest heavily in non-fiction shows, web series and cricket which is a religion in India.”
The new TVC features Team India cricket players – Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan and R. Ashwin, along with a Bollywood Diva – Elli AvrRam. It shows the festivities that surround the festival and the importance of the perfect gift which helps you capture your memorable Diwali moments.
Oppo, says it, leverages all platforms to connect with its consumers and uses a 360-degree marketing campaign for all its products and service but television continues to command the highest advertising investment.
About 350 million people out of the country’s 1.2 billion population currently own a smartphone. To expand its presence to tier II and tier III cities, which are still relatively untapped regions in the country, Oppo is looking to tie up with local merchants to rebrand their stores as Oppo stores. Although the brand enjoys a healthy mix of sales from urban and rural areas, 55-60 per cent of its offtake comes from mini metros and rural.
The company at present has 25,000 point of sales in India and aims to open 550 plus after sales service centres by the end of 2017. “Our key focus is on offline sales and that is why we are constantly exploring more retailers to get on board,” Yang concluded.
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.
