Brands
Virtusa hands the reins to Nitesh Banga as president & CEO
MUMBAI: Change is in the air at Virtusa Corporation, as the company announces a leadership transition designed to propel it into the future of digital engineering and AI-driven business solutions. Nitesh Banga has been appointed as president & CEO, effective 3 February 2025, succeeding Santosh Thomas, who steps down to explore new opportunities. To ensure a smooth handover, Thomas will remain a strategic advisor during the transition.
Reflecting on his tenure, Thomas expressed pride in Virtusa’s transformation over the past four years. “I am immensely proud of the substantial growth we have accomplished together. It has been exciting to witness firsthand the positive impact on our people, clients, and their customers,” he said. Thomas positioned Virtusa as a global digital leader, spearheading strategic acquisitions, operational excellence, and technology expansion, while achieving record-high client and employee net-promoter scores.
Banga, the new face at Virtusa’s helm, joins from GlobalLogic, where he served as president & CEO. His leadership at GlobalLogic saw transformational growth, including the successful integration of the company with Hitachi. With nearly three decades in the technology services sector, including over 20 years at Infosys, Banga brings a wealth of experience in strategy, business development, service delivery, and mergers & acquisitions.
Banga sees Virtusa uniquely positioned to drive digital and AI-powered transformation for enterprises. “I am deeply honored to step into this role at such a pivotal moment of change in the industry,” he stated. “The future belongs to businesses that hyper-focus on customer needs, leveraging digital and AI technologies with a solid data strategy. Virtusa’s engineering DNA and domain expertise offer the perfect foundation to help brands transform and differentiate their businesses.”
Board of directors chair, Rajeev Mehta extended his appreciation to Thomas for his leadership since joining Virtusa in 2021. “Santosh expanded our global presence, grew our service offerings, and positioned Virtusa as a leader in Digital Engineering and AI. We thank him for his dedication and wish him continued success.” Looking forward, Mehta is confident that Banga’s deep expertise and passion for client success will drive Virtusa’s next wave of innovation. “With an AI-powered world ahead, I look forward to working with Nitesh to optimise our business and deliver transformative results for our clients,” he added.
Virtusa’s leadership transition signals a bold step forward, reinforcing its commitment to technology-led business transformation and AI-driven solutions. With Banga at the helm, the company is ready to tackle the next frontier of digital innovation.
Brands
Creative Intelligence: Using AI to Predict Which Ads Will Actually Convert
Priyanka Aeron, Director & Co-founder of Thrive Global AI
MUMBAI: In a heavily populated digital landscape, simply being creative with your advertising will not guarantee that your ad will be successful. In fact, brands today are producing more content than ever. However, very little of that results in actual engagement or sales. However, Creative Intelligence, powered by AI, is fundamentally transforming the advertising industry.
Creative Intelligence utilizes data, machine learning, and statistical behavioral insights to analyze and predict how well a creative asset will perform prior to it being published. Therefore, marketers no longer have to rely on either their gut instincts or post-campaign analytics for making informed decisions before production. That said, AI-powered creative intelligence greatly improves results and decreases wasted dollars spent.
Moving Beyond Guesswork
In the past, making ads was a mix of gut feeling, experience, and A/B testing. These methods were useful, but reactive by nature. People have already spent their budgets by the time the results are looked at. AI models can find patterns that are linked to higher engagement and conversion rates by looking at huge datasets. These datasets can include things like past campaign performance, audience behavior, and visual elements like color, composition, and facial expressions. This helps marketers guess which ads will do well even before they go live.
Decoding What Truly Drives Conversions
AI-powered creative intelligence allows for an evaluation of advertisements that is not limited to the basic data but also explores the elements of an effective advertisement through subtle reactions; clarity and directness of the ad message and how well the ad captures audience’s attention in the first three seconds. AI can also provide insights into the successful use of advertisements directed to human faces, which connect through eye contact based on media channels, and how advertisements that utilize shorter but clear calls to action may produce more clicks from certain populations. The insights, provided through AI, provide marketers with the ability to think beyond creating more advertising material and additionally create more effective ad campaigns that actually convert.
Personalization at Scale
Consumers expect relevance more than ever. Irrelevant mass messaging is not going to work in a society inundated with information. Hyper-personalization, using AI, allows companies to create content that suits individual segments within their target markets based on their demographics, interests, and behaviors. Rather than having one single message that aims to reach everyone, brands can have many versions of their messages tailored to each segment within the market. Such flexibility is what makes campaigns successful nowadays.
Faster Iteration, Better Results
Another advantage to using AI in creative decision-making is speed. Companies must improvise because their campaign cycles are shorter than ever before, and having the ability to iterate rapidly is more important than it has ever been. There is no greater way to do this work than through AI, as new technologies give brands the ability to test multiple creative avenues and figure out which ones are working well. This reduces a lot of the testing that companies would otherwise have to do and makes the process faster.
With AI, brands can also make creative changes in real-time during a campaign, allowing the, to make vital decisions and adjust their creatives, rather than waiting out. This allows for faster adaptability, well-tested campaigns and reduced lost ad spend.
The Human-AI Collaboration
Even though AI is capable of performing certain tasks, its purpose is not to eliminate human creativity. Successful campaigns require human collaboration with computer intellect since both complement each other. While computers are capable of dealing with massive amounts of information, discovering patterns, and providing predictions, humans are the one to inject stories and emotions into campaigns.
The Future of Advertising
As the complexity of advertising becomes harder with the passage of time, Creative Intelligence will play a significant role in helping marketers formulate a strategic approach. The yardstick that will set standards for determining whether a marketing firm has fulfilled its responsibilities will be the forecasting of future outcomes, as well as personalized content and optimization of creative elements in real-time. In contrast to the existing scenario where the campaigns remain fixed, these campaigns will be capable of adjusting themselves according to the customer interacting with the brand, as well as other trends on social media channels. This will enable brands to offer customers an engaging experience that will exceed expectations. The biggest hurdle marketers will face will be finding ways to utilize these capabilities without compromising branding and enhancing the creativity of the team involved.
