Brands
Shamik Basu joins Adobe as VP creative cloud in India
Former Microsoft leader to steer flagship creative products and teams
MUMBAI: Shamik Basu has joined Adobe as vice president, creative cloud, where he will lead the company’s flagship creative products from India.
In his new role, Basu will oversee teams working on some of Adobe’s most widely used tools, including Illustrator, Firefly, Photoshop, InDesign and Premiere Pro, placing him at the heart of the company’s global creative technology engine.
Basu arrives at Adobe after a long and influential stint at Microsoft, where he most recently served as VP, office product group. There, he drove improvements across core product fundamentals such as performance, reliability and user experience for widely used applications like Word, Excel and PowerPoint. He also played a key role in shaping an AI-first approach to product development, bringing new capabilities to users while rethinking how software is built at scale.
Earlier, as partner director of engineering for Microsoft 365, Basu led teams across India working on a suite of productivity tools and services used by billions globally. His leadership extended across products such as OneNote, Visio and Project, alongside cross-platform innovations spanning voice, video and cloud-connected applications.
His tenure also included leading product and engineering for Skype in India, where he helped scale Skype Lite, a lightweight app tailored for Indian users, driving it past 10 million installs. Prior to that, he held leadership roles across Visual Studio Online and MSN and Bing, where he worked on high-scale platforms serving hundreds of millions of users worldwide.
With a career spanning more than three decades in software development, product management and engineering leadership, Basu brings a rare blend of technical depth and product vision. His move to Adobe signals a continued focus on India as a key hub for building globally impactful creative tools.
As creative workflows increasingly blend design, AI and collaboration, Basu’s appointment suggests Adobe is sharpening its focus on the next wave of digital creativity, with India firmly in the frame.
Brands
MS Dhoni joins Cars24’s Crashfree India as Goodwill Ambassador
Cricketing legend lends his voice to the fight against road fatalities in India.
MUMBAI: MS Dhoni has traded his cricket whites for a new kind of captaincy, one that aims to save lives on India’s roads. The former India captain has been appointed Goodwill Ambassador for Crashfree India, Cars24’s national road safety initiative. The move brings one of the country’s most trusted and disciplined public figures to a cause that desperately needs both credibility and urgency.
India continues to record the highest number of traffic fatalities globally. In 2024 alone, 1,80,000 people lost their lives on Indian roads, one every three minutes. The country has roughly 1% of the world’s vehicles but accounts for 11 per cent of global road deaths. Shockingly, 66 per cent of those killed were between 18 and 34 years old, the most productive age group, and nearly 10,000 were school students. Seven in ten fatalities were linked to overspeeding.
Dhoni, known for his calm judgment under pressure, did not mince words when speaking about the issue. “A vehicle gives you freedom, but it also gives you responsibility,” he said. “On our roads, too many people still see safety as a rule to follow only when someone is watching. That mindset has cost us far too much.”
He added: “We already know what is going wrong. We know how many lives are being lost. What we need now is not more excuses. We need more responsibility, more discipline, and more respect for life.”
For Cars24, the association goes beyond a celebrity endorsement. Founder and CEO Vikram Chopra described Dhoni’s involvement as a game-changer: “His understanding of Indian roads is grounded in lived experience. He holds us to a higher standard and his involvement challenges us to push this mission further.”
Crashfree India aims to shift the national conversation on road safety from reaction to prevention, from accepting deaths as routine to treating them as the urgent failure they are. With Dhoni on board, the initiative gains a powerful, trusted voice that transcends statistics and connects directly with millions of Indians.
In a country where dangerous driving is too often mistaken for confidence, Dhoni’s message is refreshingly clear: true strength lies in control, discipline, and respect for life. When one of India’s most respected captains decides to lead this fight, the conversation suddenly becomes much harder to ignore.
The roads just got a new captain. And this time, the goal is not to win a trophy but to save lives.
