Brands
Sad that bigger brands not investing enough on digital: BC Web Wise’ Chaaya Baradhwaaj
NEW DELHI: One of the leading independent advertising agencies, serving clients like TikTok ads, BC Web Wise recently completed two decades of its fabulous journey. On the occasion, Indiantelevision.com interacted with founder and MD Chaaya Baradhwaaj to know about the agency, its journey and her take on the current trends in digital marketing.
About the glorious journey of the agency, Baradhwaaj said, “The best way to describe our market value is to look at our two-decade journey, a marquee client roster, an impeccable reputation. In 2017, we got a CRISIL two-star rating for MSMEs. This year we got ‘Best Places To Work Certified’. We have consistently therefore not only been doing noteworthy work as a digital marketing agency – winning awards, but also a very stable organisation with a great work-place culture.”
Baradhwaaj is expecting that this growth will only pick up pace in the coming future, as the digital technologies and communications grow. She believes that the industry will become more dynamic, volatile, and fluid. She sees this as an opportunity for agencies like hers to double up their ability to nimble and adapt quickly.
“It will be the biggest advertising media in about a decade or even lesser than that. It will totally change the way advertising is done today. It will help to build and grow (as it already is) many more profitable businesses giving consumers better choices, better prices, more transparency through the marketing funnel,” she notes.
However, she feels that traditional brands are still not spending enough on digital mediums. “Traditional brands especially the larger ones tend to spend not more than five per cent to a maximum of 15 per cent on digital, which is going to be unfortunate in my opinion for these businesses. Unfortunately few can see the writing on the wall.”
On being asked if the ongoing stress due to Covid-19 will further hamper the value propositions of traditional media like TV, further aiding the digital growth, she explains, “I hope Covid-19 is only going to be a short term blip. But TV, I think, is already keeling under pressure with the existing fragmentation, costs, and the rapid proliferation of OTT, plus UGC on digital, freedom to create and access content in an almost free world of digital, and the rapid adoption of digital across demographics.”
She adds, “Digital is huge. Big brands are not able to adapt to it, unfortunately. They are possibly too thick into traditional ways of doing things and unable to adapt. But there is a huge breed of fresh new startups from across the nation that is becoming bigger by the day by sharply focusing on digital marketing. There are many Nykaas in the making today. Meesho, a social e-commerce app, for instance, clickt2care.com, 1mg.com. There are many players across segments and they are investing big on digital already.”
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.
