Brands
Policybazaar, Paisabazaar sign Akshay Kumar as brand ambassador
MUMBAI: ETechAces Marketing & Consulting, which owns insur-tech brand, PolicyBazaar.com, and marketplace for lending products, PaisaBazaar.com, has roped in actor Akshay Kumar as its brand ambassador.
Policybazaar.com and Paisabazaar.com have launched their biggest ever marketing campaign, spread across the financial products basket of term insurance, free credit score and others.
The campaign was launched with a video of Kumar donning the avatar of Yamraj for Policybazaar’s campaign on the digital platform. The first TVCs from the duo will be aired across a spectrum of TV channels, including the IPL broadcast.
Commenting on why the maverick actor was a natural choice for the brand to sign as its ambassador, policybazaar.com co-founder and group CEO Yashish Dahiya says, “He is self-made, speaks directly and delivers important messages with humour, these attributes make him a perfect fit for our brands. Like him, our brands stand for transparency, positive social change, reliability, trust and have a genuine connect with the masses. So, this partnership is a natural extension of the values that we share with him. Our shared passion for fitness is an added plus.”
paisabazaar.com co-founder and CEO Naveen Kukreja adds, “Being the market leaders for both insurance and lending products, our next step is to take our brand to every Indian household and who better than Akshay Kumar to spread this message. Along with being one of the biggest names in the Indian entertainment Industry, he is also the face that the common man resonates with. We strongly feel our association with Akshay would further build customer’s trust on Policybazaar and Paisabazaar.”
Policybazaar.com and paisabazaar.com associate director and group head of marketing Sai Narayan mentions, “Our latest marketing campaign, featuring Akshay Kumar, is aimed to garner a wider reach for both Policybazaar and Paisabazaar’s key messaging around financial products. We have already upped the ante through our ongoing campaign during the IPL broadcasts, and will be launching our new campaign with Akshay in the IPL later this week. We will also launch other product-specific campaigns with Akshay through the year.”
The high-impact campaign will be aired on Star Sports, Star Sports HD, Star Gold, &Pictures, &TV, Discovery Channel, History TV18, National Geographic, NDTV 24×7, India Today, Mirror Now, Zee TV, Aaj Tak, ABP News and others.
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.
