MAM
Sam Balsara warns marketers not to lose the plot in the age of digital frenzy
MUMBAI: When the world is scrolling, swiping, and snacking on content, Madison World chairman Sam Balsara reminded marketers at Ficci Frames 2025 that branding remains the heartbeat of advertising. Opening with his talk “A Marketer’s Losing Fame in Branding”, Balsara mixed wit with insight, calling out the obsession with short-term performance media and urging a return to storytelling that builds lasting emotional connections.
Reflecting on a career spanning 8 years in marketing, 8 years in advertising, and 37 years running his own agency, Balsara quipped that in India, “everybody thinks they are an advertising expert.” Yet despite decades of experience, he painted a sobering picture of the current marketing landscape: urban consumption in India has been declining for five consecutive quarters, pushing marketers to channel increasing shares of their budgets into performance media such as search, e-commerce, activation, and sampling. While these tactics are effective for immediate sales, Balsara cautioned that over-reliance is eroding the long-term ROI of advertising investments.
He reminded the audience that the global advertising industry, already worth 270 billion dollars in 1997, is projected to surpass 1 trillion dollars this year, with 70% of the spend now going digital. “Marketers are not wrong to follow consumers online, but we must understand the nature of digital consumption,” he noted. “Most online engagement is short, quick, and snackable. It’s easy to measure, but much harder to emotionally connect.”
Balsara then revisited the fundamentals: “What is branding? It’s more than a logo, a tagline, or a design. It’s about shaping perception, building trust, differentiating from competitors, and establishing a lasting emotional bond.” He emphasised that emotional appeal is twice as effective as rational messaging and that storytelling remains the most powerful tool for brand building. Over 50 years of experience had taught him that ads with strong narratives and emotional content consistently outperform transactional messages.
Supporting this, he cited multiple cross-media studies showing that TV ads excel at creating emotional connections. The rise of connected TV (CTV) in India with 60–65 million homes and counting offers advertisers the chance to combine digital agility with the immersive, story-driven impact traditionally associated with television. CTV delivers a “lean-back” viewing experience that enables 20–30 second emotional ads with a storyline, which are far more effective than brief digital clips for establishing memory and preference.
A US study conducted by Comcast and Media Science reinforced this point. The study compared ad recall and purchase intent across mobile digital platforms versus TV/CTV environments. The findings were striking: new brands saw 3.4x better recall on TV versus mobile digital, while established brands saw 4.3x improvement. Purchase intent was roughly 30 per cent higher when ads ran on TV first, and combining TV with subsequent digital exposure further amplified results. Balsara underscored that these insights are directly applicable in India: launching campaigns on TV or CTV before digital platforms maximises emotional impact and ROI.
He also offered practical guidance on budget allocation. Drawing on research by two contemporary scientists, Balsara advocated a 60-40 split, with 60 per cent of marketing budgets dedicated to branding to recruit new users and build markets, and 40 per cent for performance to drive conversions among consumers already in the market. He highlighted examples from IPL campaigns, where television exposure drives higher search volumes and e-commerce sales, often outperforming purely digital campaigns.
Balsara’s insights weren’t limited to statistics. He emphasised that creative messaging must align with human attention patterns: the large screen, immersive environment, and minimal distractions of TV/CTV are what allow brands to tell stories effectively. Digital publishers, he warned, must evolve to offer advertisers TV-like environments in digital contexts, replicating emotional storytelling and ensuring brand-building outcomes.
Performance media, he admitted, has its role especially for direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands in their early years but as brands scale, performance alone fails to sustain growth or build long-term equity. Branding, by contrast, delivers sustainable profit, loyalty, and market presence. “If you want a brand to last and scale,” he said, “you cannot ignore branding. The first exposure matters, the emotional appeal matters, and repetition matters.”
He concluded by reminding marketers that despite the digital frenzy, brand building is not optional, it’s essential. A carefully calibrated mix of branding and performance, emotionally engaging storytelling, and strategic sequencing across TV, CTV, and digital ensures that marketing budgets deliver both immediate results and enduring brand equity.
In a world dominated by clicks, short videos, and fleeting attention spans, Balsara’s message was clear: don’t lose the plot chasing short-term wins. Stay invested in stories, invest in emotion, and let branding drive both present performance and future growth. After all, in advertising as in life, the brands that tell stories that stick are the ones that endure.
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.
