MAM
Titan appoints Ashok Sonthalia as CFO, Swadesh Behera as chief people officer
Mumbai: Tata group-owned Titan Company on Thursday announced the appointment of Ashok Kumar Sonthalia as its new chief financial officer. He will be responsible for the company’s overall finance and accounts functions, it said in a statement. The watches and jewellery maker also announced Swadesh Behera as the chief people officer of the company. Both appointments are effective from 1 July, it added.
In his most recent role, Sonthalia worked as a chief financial officer at Larsen & Toubro Infotech. He has also worked in senior positions at Greaves Cotton Ltd, Tata Chemicals, and Tata Steel.
Commenting on his appointment, Sonthalia said, ”It’s an absolute honor and privilege to be a part of Titan, a company I have long admired for evoking trust and transforming consumer retail experience in India. I am looking forward to working with the team here on executing its strategic growth plans in India as well as in select international markets. Its philosophy of creating value for all its stakeholders will remain central in all our endeavours.”
Sonthalia is a chartered accountant with around 30 years of experience in areas of strategic financial planning, business development, M&A, treasury, finance, and accounts in diverse industry verticals in multi-cultural and multi-national environments.
Behera was previously associated with Boston Scientific Corp as senior director-HR. His past professional stints also include Ranbaxy, Coca Cola, MSD, and Tata Steel. He has extensive change management experience which encompasses setting up Greenfield operations, building capability, talent acquisition during high growth phases of business.
Behera shared, “Delighted to join Titan and be a part of a leadership team which truly believes in putting people first in everything they do, where employee care and happiness is valued as much as the business growth. Looking forward to working with the team whose continuous endeavour has been to build a strong leadership pipeline, future capabilities, an inclusive culture to propel the growth aspirations and making Titan as an employer of choice.”
Brands
IICT partners with Gativedhi to bring studio production tools to students
New MoU lets students explore AI-driven production pipelines for AVGC-XR
MUMBAI: The Indian Institute of Creative Technologies (IICT) has teamed up with Gativedhi Technologies to give students a front-row seat to modern studio production. The collaboration will integrate Gativedhi’s AI-powered production intelligence platform, Shotrack, into academic programmes, letting students experience the workflow systems used by animation, VFX and gaming studios.
Under the MoU, faculty, students and researchers will get hands-on access to Shotrack through beta programmes, pilot deployments and academic evaluations. This will allow them to explore simulated production pipelines, understand asset management, track tasks and monitor schedules, essentially seeing how complex projects come together behind the scenes.
Shotrack is designed to tackle a key industry challenge: when multiple studios work on the same project, differing internal systems often create bottlenecks, slow approvals and complicate version control. The platform provides a unified production environment, enabling smoother collaboration across distributed teams while generating operational insights and predictive analytics to optimise crew allocation, forecast schedule risks and manage costs.
The collaboration also opens doors to Gativedhi’s wider ecosystem. Upcoming tools include StudioTrack, for studio operations management covering budgeting, recruitment and IT infrastructure, and WorkTrack, which measures workflow efficiency and team productivity across industries.
IICT plans to embed these tools into programmes covering animation pipelines, VFX workflows, gaming production and media project management. Students will also benefit from guest lectures, masterclasses, workshops, internships and research projects that connect academic learning with real-world studio practices.
IICT CEO Vishwas Deoskar, said the partnership provides “An environment where production pipeline tools can be explored, tested and refined while students gain insight into how large-scale productions are organised.”
Gativedhi Technologies founder & CEO Senthil Kumar added, “This collaboration introduces students to real-world studio management tools and helps us improve our platform with academic feedback.”
With Shotrack in classrooms, India’s future animators, VFX artists and gaming producers will get a taste of studio life long before they step into one.
