Brands
PepsiCo India and Google Pay partner to offer cashback on festive purchases
Mumbai: PepsiCo India has unveiled a brand activation on Google Pay, India, featuring some of their most beloved snack brands, and introducing an exciting and rewarding experience for all Google Pay users. Ringing in the festive season, users can now enjoy up to Rs 20 and Rs 30 cashback on the purchase of Lay’s, Kurkure, and Doritos packs priced at Rs 20 and Rs 30, respectively.
As the festive season brings joy, the company of snacks adds an extra layer of delight to these moments. This period sees a significant uptick in the demand for packaged snacks, contributing to an overall increase in snack consumption. Furthermore, this snack purchase experience is heightened when it offers direct financial benefits. Recent industry reports underline a trend that shoppers prefer rewards seamlessly integrated into their shopping experience, with discounts automatically applied at checkout. Cashbacks align perfectly with consumers’ yearning for instant gratification, providing a satisfying sense of reward for their purchases.
In line with these trends, PepsiCo India, in collaboration with Google Pay has introduced a cashback offer on the purchase of Lay’s, Kurkure and Doritos. To avail the benefit, users can simply find the promo code inside the pack and redeem it on the Google Pay App. Once the code is claimed, users can enjoy cashback of up to Rs 20 and Rs 30 (on purchase of packs with Rs 20 and Rs 30, respectively). Each participating user has the opportunity to redeem the offer up to three times, ensuring more joy and rewards during this festive season.
Sharing her excitement on the partnership with Google Pay, PepsiCo India category lead – potato chips Saumya Rathor expressed, “Festive moments are synonymous with joy and celebration, and we firmly believe that snacks can make these occasions even more memorable. Aimed at elevating the snacking experience for our valued consumers this season, we are excited to announce our partnership with Google Pay. Through this collaboration, consumers can earn cashbacks on their beloved PepsiCo products, adding an extra layer of delight to the festive spirit. We are confident that this will be a win-win for both PepsiCo and Google Pay, and hope that everyone enjoys a joy-filled season.”
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.
