Brands
BalleBaazi becomes SportsBaazi introduces ‘Watch and Play games
Mumbai: BalleBaazi, India’s leading and coveted sports gaming platform, today announced its rebranding to SportsBaazi to demonstrate its commitment towards revolutionizing the sports engagement landscape in India while continuing on a rapid growth and expansion trajectory. Along with the unveiling of the new brand logo, SportsBaazi also announced the launch of the “LIVE Mein Hai VIBE” campaign to introduce the compelling “Watch and Play” category of skill games on its platform to elevate user engagement.
The company’s strategic decision to rebrand and foray into the Watch and Play category of skill games is aimed at bringing exciting formats and innovative user experiences to redefine how fans experience and interact with sports. SportsBaazi is preparing to unveil a new avatar that promises to immerse millions of Indian sports spectators in a gaming experience while the event unfolds.
Commenting on rebranding to SportsBaazi and the launch of the “Watch and Play” category, SportsBaazi co-founder and CEO Saurabh Chopra shared, “Our journey began with a simple yet powerful vision of making sports gaming fun while building a community of sports enthusiasts in the country. With SportsBaazi and the introduction of our spectator engagement category, we are not just rebranding but reimagining and building the future of live sports gaming in India.”
“Our new identity and category will provide fans with a unique opportunity to come closer to the action and engage in real-time. This new avatar will bring millions of spectators in India across sporting categories to come closer.” added the co-founder and CEO
Understanding how sports fans go through a range of emotions while watching a game LIVE and how their VIBE changes as per the events in the match, SportsBaazi conceptualized the “LIVE Mein Hai VIBE” campaign. The ad films resonate with the dynamic nature of live sports experiences and feature India’s pace legend, Zaheer Khan. The spots introduce the “Watch and Play” category and announce the brand’s rebranding to SportsBaazi.
Watch and play is an innovative concept where fans not only watch their favourite sports but also actively participate in them through live skill games. It’s an immersive experience that brings fans closer to the thrill of live sports and encourages them to test their knowledge about the sport and the player dynamics. The screen flashes questions about how they foresee the next over/set panning out and anticipate the player’s performance by being cognizant of variables like the opponent and the conditions in mind.
SportsBaazi during the Indian Premier League also introduced two new formats, Fantasy Wars, a battle between two experts in which users have to assess and determine the probability of whose Fantasy team is better throughout the duration of the game. Stats Fantasy is a feature that empowers users to play and win during the match by answering simple questions related to the LIVE events happening in the game.
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.
