MAM
Apollo puts tyres to the test as Team India’s grit gets the big screen
MUMBAI: From dusty maidans to packed stadiums, every great cricket story begins with a long drive and Apollo Tyres is betting that journey is where the real drama lives. The tyre major, lead sponsor of the Indian cricket team, has rolled out a new brand campaign, Har Safar Mein Dum Hai, placing endurance and discipline at the heart of both Indian cricket and its own brand philosophy. The film brings together Sachin Tendulkar and current Team India stars Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Shubman Gill and Arshdeep Singh, all appearing in official Team India jerseys.
Directed by filmmaker Abhinay Deo and set to A R Rahman’s Maa Tujhe Salaam, the film traces the real-life journeys of the players from childhood ambition to the weight of wearing the India jersey. The narrative places as much emphasis on family sacrifices and personal discipline as it does on talent, underlining the standards required not just to reach the top, but to stay there.
Running through the story is Tendulkar, not merely as a brand ambassador but as a living benchmark, a reminder of the values and expectations that continue to shape Indian cricket across generations. The campaign draws a parallel between this legacy and Apollo Tyres’ own evolution from a domestic player to a global brand built on performance and reliability.
“This campaign reflects a core belief at Apollo Tyres that excellence is built through resilience, discipline and consistency,” said Apollo Tyres Ltd vice chairman and managing director Neeraj Kanwar describing Har Safar Mein Dum Hai as a tribute to the Indian spirit and the commitment it takes to be the best.
Scriptwriter and conceptualiser Simran Kanwar said the film focuses on the relentless pursuit of excellence rather than the moment of arrival, calling it one of the rare campaigns to unite multiple global sporting icons from a single sport, anchored by a song synonymous with Indian cricketing pride.
The cricket establishment has also thrown its weight behind the narrative. Board of Control for Cricket in India secretary Devajit Saikia said the film captures the hard work, sacrifice and endurance required to represent the country at the highest level, adding that the association reflects a shared belief in nurturing talent from the grassroots up.
For Apollo Tyres, the campaign is more than a star-studded spectacle. According to Apollo Tyres Ltd Group head of marketing Udyan Ghai, the film reinforces the brand’s positioning around performance and reliability, while mirroring Indian cricket’s journey from local beginnings to global stature.
In a country where cricket is measured as much in emotion as in runs and wickets, Har Safar Mein Dum Hai makes a clear pitch, greatness is not about the destination, but the road and having the stamina to stay the course.
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.
