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Sahara Force India teams up with Hackett
MUMBAI: Sahara Force India has announced that Hackett, the London-based fashion brand, has joined the team as an Official Supplier for 2012.
Part of Hackett’s association will involve supplying team members with travel kit to be worn while travelling to and from races. The latest Hackett designs will be issued to staff this week in preparation for next week’s season-opening Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne.
The relationship with Sahara Force India marks the continuation of Hackett’s ambitious plans to expand further into international markets, especially India, and capitalise on the global appeal of the sport.
Sahara Force India Team Principal and MD Dr. Vijay Mallya, “I’m delighted to welcome Hackett to the team and look forward to seeing our team members wearing their clothes this season. I have a great interest in fashion and believe the clothes we wear speak volumes about who we are and the values that are important to us. Formula One is therefore the perfect showcase for Hackett’s range and helps reinforce their strong tradition of style and quality.”
Hackett MD Vicente Castellano, “Continuing with our motor racing tradition, it seemed a natural step to support our new and exciting business expansion into India by becoming a partner to the Sahara Force India Formula One team for 2012. We are looking forward to supporting the team as they continue their fight to work their way up the highly competitive Formula One grid.”
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Smytten appoints Shishir Varma as CEO of Pulseai Research
Rebranded AI platform scales with 150 plus clients and 30 million users.
MUMBAI: In a world obsessed with what consumers say, Smytten is betting on what they actually do. The company has appointed Shishir Varma as chief executive officer of Pulseai Research, signalling a sharper push into AI-led, behaviour-driven consumer insights. The move comes as Smytten rebrands its insights vertical from Smytten PulseAI to Pulseai Research, marking a shift away from traditional, project-based research towards a more continuous, intelligence-led model.
Varma brings over 30 years of global experience across APAC markets, including India, China and Japan. Most recently managing director, Insights at Kantar Japan, he has built and scaled consumer insight businesses across geographies, including playing a key role in establishing Millward Brown in India. His mandate now: turn Pulseai into a category-defining platform in a space still dominated by surveys and static reports.
The pitch is straightforward but ambitious. Instead of relying on claimed responses, Pulseai Research taps into observed behaviour leveraging Smytten’s ecosystem of 30 million users built over a decade of product discovery, trials and purchases. The idea is to close the long-standing gap between what consumers claim and how they actually behave.
The numbers suggest early traction. In under 18 months, the platform has onboarded over 150 enterprise clients across sectors, pointing to growing demand for faster, more reliable alternatives to legacy research models.
Under the hood, the platform blends behavioural data with AI and large language model-led analysis to deliver real-time sentiment tracking, scalable qualitative insights, faster quantitative studies and always-on brand intelligence. In practical terms, that means compressing research timelines from weeks to days without sacrificing depth.
The ambition extends beyond FMCG. Pulseai Research is positioning itself as a cross-category intelligence layer, spanning auto, education, gadgets and emerging consumer segments anywhere behaviour-rich data can sharpen decision-making.
For Smytten, the leadership hire is less about optics and more about direction. With Varma at the helm, the company is leaning into a simple but powerful premise: in the age of AI, insight isn’t just about asking better questions, it’s about watching more closely.
