MAM
Sony sets Bollywood tapping to promote DPL
MUMBAI: If it‘s Bollywood singing across the silver screen this season, then there is some serious foot-tapping on the television sets too.
Sony Entertainment Television (Set) has, thus, decided to use some big Bollywood endorsers to market its latest property, Dance Premier League (DPL). To be aired every Friday and Saturday at 8 pm, DPL will run for 12 weeks with a total telecast of 24 episodes. To promote its newest show, the channel has tied up with three movies – Main Aurr Mrs Khanna, All the Best and Radio wherein leading stars from the movies will represent a particular team. Salman Khan will represent ‘Uttar Ke Puttar‘ with LMN as the team sponsor. The ‘Eastern Tigers‘, meanwhile, will be represented by Bipasha Basu. Samsung Mobile has been roped in as the team sponsor. Kareena Kapoor will support ‘Western Yodhas‘ with Closeup as the team sponsor. The ‘Southern Sizzlers‘, sponsored by White Ice, will be backed by Prabhu Deva. Endorsed by Videocon, Himesh Reshammiya will stand for the ‘Central Surmas‘ while Sohail Khan will support the ‘Desi Pardesi‘ team. Gate Basmati Rice has walked on board as the team sponsor. Playing on the theme, ‘Izzat Ka Sawaal Hai‘, the marketing of DPL will remain high across television, radio, print, outdoor and web. For television, the promotion will be held across 15 channels. These will include Hindi news channels Star News and Aaj Tak, movie channels such as UTV Movies and kids channels like Hungama and Nickelodeon. Says Set marketing head Danish Khan, “We have booked 5000 TV spots across television channels of various genres. We have also booked spots during the ICC Champions Trophy to gain maximum visibility.” As part of the radio promotion activity, the channel has tied up with 40 radio stations across India and has booked 3,500 radio spots for the same. Outdoor media, meanwhile, will be utilised to promote the property in 23 cities. “There are 1000 plus hoardings that have been put up across the country. Additionally, we have branded the boarding passes of Jet Airways and JetLite. In Mumbai, we are using around 200 hoardings. We have also branded Andheri railway station for creating awareness,” adds Khan. The channel will also unveil a microsite dedicated to DPL. On the site, each team will have its own page and every detail on the team will be displayed. The site will allow people to own DPL teams and play DPL games. Additionally, the channel will exploit social networking sites including Facebook and Orkut to spread brand awareness.
Brands
Samsung certifies 1,000 Maharashtra students in AI and coding
The South Korean electronics giant marks its first large-scale skilling push in the state, with women making up nearly half the national programme’s enrolment
PUNE: Samsung has put 1,000 students in Maharashtra through a certified training programme in artificial intelligence and coding, the largest such drive the South Korean electronics company has run in the state and a signal that corporate India’s skilling ambitions are moving well beyond the boardroom brochure.
The certifications were awarded under Samsung Innovation Campus (SIC), the company’s flagship corporate social responsibility programme, which launched in India in 2022 with the stated aim of democratising access to future-technology education. The 1,000 graduates were drawn from four institutions: 127 from Savitribai Phule Pune University, 373 from Pimpri Chinchwad University, 250 from D.Y. Patil University’s Ramrao Adik Institute of Technology and 250 from Anjuman-I-Islam’s Kalsekar Technical Campus. All completed training in either AI or coding and programming, the two disciplines Samsung has identified as the critical pillars of the digital economy.
The programme does not stop at technical training. Soft-skills development and career-readiness modules are baked into the curriculum, a deliberate attempt to close the gap between what universities teach and what employers actually want.
“India’s digital growth story will ultimately be shaped by the quality of its talent pipeline,” said Shubham Mukherjee, head of CSR and corporate communications at Samsung Southwest Asia. “As technologies like AI move from the periphery to the core of industries, skilling must evolve from basic training to building real-world capability. This milestone in Maharashtra reflects how industry and academia can come together to create a future-ready workforce that is both globally competitive and locally relevant.”
The Maharashtra drive sits within a rapidly scaling national effort. Samsung Innovation Campus trained 20,000 young people across India in 2025, hitting its stated target for the year. Women account for 48 per cent of national enrolments, a figure the company cites as evidence of its push for an inclusive technology ecosystem. The programme is implemented in partnership with the Electronics Sector Skills Council of India and the Telecom Sector Skill Council.
Samsung, which is marking 30 years in India this year, runs SIC alongside two other initiatives, Samsung Solve for Tomorrow and Samsung DOST, as part of a broader effort to build what it calls a generation of innovators with both the technical depth and the problem-solving mindset to thrive in a fast-moving digital world.
A thousand certified students is a tidy headline. Whether they find jobs that match their new skills is the harder question, and the one that will ultimately determine whether corporate skilling programmes like this one are genuine pipelines or well-photographed gestures.
