Publicis.Sapient ropes in top former executives from Amazon, Tesco

New Delhi: Publicis.Sapient, the digital business transformation hub of Publicis Groupe, on Tuesday announced it has hired former Tesco executive Tilak Doddapaneni and ex-Amazon senior Rakesh Ravuri to help clients build businesses of the future.

Doddapaneni will work as Global Head of Engineering while Ravuri, who has held a succession of senior engineering roles at Amazon, will join as Chief Technology Officer for programming languages and cloud and Global Head of Engineering for Retail, the company said in a statement.

Doddapaneni will report to Nigel Vaz, Publicis Groupe Lead for Digital Business Transformation and CEO of Publicis.Sapient EMEA and APAC.

Ravuri, who has been hired to play a key leadership role in Publicis.Sapient's extensive operations in India, will report to Doddapaneni.

"I'm delighted that Tilak and Rakesh will be joining Publicis.Sapient on our journey to build our engineering capability as part of our product engineering approach to deliver digital business transformation for our clients," Vaz said.

Both Doddapaneni and Ravuri are Sapient alumni.

The appointments come as Publicis.Sapient expands its product engineering capability -- vital to digital business transformation and the ability to help clients transform their business and create exponential growth.

At Tesco, Doddapaneni built a modern online engineering team spanning India and the UK.

In his new role, Doddapaneni will lead the entire technology delivery community across Publicis.Sapient globally.

"I am excited to return to Sapient, which continues to lead the way as a digital transformation company that uniquely combines strategy, experience and engineering disciplines to help clients reimagine and transform their businesses for a digital age," said Doddapaneni.

Ravuri built the engineering team responsible for the software systems for Amazon's new logistics business to launch ship.amazon, delivering millions of packages for its sellers.

"I am excited to have a chance to play a leading role in the engineering transformation both for Sapient and its clients," added Ravuri.

Publicis.Sapient has a workforce of 19,000 people working at over 100 offices worldwide.