MAM
Booking.com ropes in Shanaya Kapoor for the Booking Explorers campaign
Mumbai: Booking.com has launched the second edition of its award-winning “Booking Explorers” campaign with gen-z celebrity Shanaya Kapoor. The campaign aims to inspire everyone to rediscover themselves and reignite their desire to travel.
It also celebrates the adventurers and trailblazers among us who have kept the spirit of travel alive, despite the struggles and disruptions we continue to face post-pandemic.
Through the “Booking Explorers” campaign, Booking.com is bringing to life the compelling stories of five explorers across APAC, including the up-and-coming Bollywood actress Shanaya Kapoor, along with other leading travel personalities from Australia, South Korea, Vietnam and Japan.
As part of the campaign, these APAC explorers share their travel stories and the desire to explore all things new and familiar, whether it’s in their own backyards or around their home countries.
Shanaya Kapoor, who is gearing up for her acting debut, shares her love for India – its colourful cities and picturesque countryside, Instagram-worthy destinations, and most importantly, the need for responsible travel among millennials.
Apart from Shanaya, this year’s campaign also features four new personalities from Australia, South Korea, Vietnam and Japan. Former MasterChef Australia grand finalist, Simon Toohey, takes us on a culinary adventure through Victoria, Australia. Multidisciplinary artist MY Q brings us through every nook of South Korea—from underground music scenes to contemporary art galleries. A nature-loving lifestyle personality, Tran Quang Dai advocates sustainable living and travel as he takes us through Vietnam. And finally, Japanese supermodel Ai Tominaga, a familiar face in haute couture, shares her love for tranquillity, the beauty of nature, and the countryside.
Booking.com Asia Pacific managing director Laura Houldsworth said, “Our explorers are truly inspirational with their desire to keep exploring the world sustainably, despite the challenges they face. I hope these stories stir travellers everywhere to open their hearts and minds to new experiences and put sustainability at the forefront of all they do.”
Shanaya Kapoor commented, “I am really excited to be associated with Booking.com and be a part of the “Booking Explorer” campaign that celebrates the relentless spirit of travel in a more meaningful and responsible way. I personally love to travel, and I feel, as a young actor trying to work on my craft, there is no better drama school than travelling into the unknown. Find inspiration in new cultures, meet new characters and learn from new friends. Even if you are not an actor, knowing yourself, finding out qualities about yourself, about your personality, you will always learn one new thing when you travel, and that, for me, is a great achievement.”
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.
