MAM
Cannes Lion 2021: Dentsu Webchutney walks home with seven Lions
New Delhi: Dentsu Webchutney, the digital-led creative agency from the house of dentsu India, has continued its run as the highest-scoring Indian agency at 2021 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity second year in a row.
In 2019, the agency topped the charts with seven metals and 16 shortlists. This time, they have beaten their previous record with 20 shortlists and seven Lions.
The agency has won three Silver and two Bronze for ‘The 8-Bit Journo’ campaign in the Direct Lion, Creative Strategy, Mobile Lions and Digital Craft categories. For the ‘World’s Most Reported Trailer’ campaign, the agency has bagged one Silver in the Entertainment category. Additionally, Dentsu Webchutney has also grabbed a Bronze for ‘The Better Half Recipes’ campaign in the Creative eCommerce category.
Commenting on the achievement, Dentsu Webchutney, NCD, PG Aditiya said, “This year’s Cannes Lions is probably our most meaningful one yet. A huge round of applause for our teams across the country, both past and present, & gratitude to our clients who’ve shape-shifted the status-quo of Indian creativity at a global level, with us.”
dentsumcgarrybowen (dentsuMB) India, CEO, Sidharth Rao said, “2019 showed us Webchutney was capable of creative excellence at the highest level. 2021 showed it was about doing it consistently – the wins this year have firmly planted the ‘new normal’ of what Webchutney’s north star as an agency is. The agency is home to some incredible talent and is a shining example of what the dentsuMB group of agencies and dentsu India itself wants to stand for.”
For the record, dentsu India has secured an overall 22 shortlists and seven Lions at Cannes Lions 2021. Dentsu Webchutney has 20 shortlists in the Creative Strategy Lions, Direct Lion, Media, Digital Craft, Entertainment, Brand Experience & Activation, Creative eCommerce Lions and Mobile Lions categories. Meanwhile, Taproot Dentsu has secured two shortlists for its heart-warming Pooja Didi Campaign for Facebook in the Film Craft and Film Lions categories.
dentsu India, CEO Anand Bhadkamkar said, “This recognition is only a testament to the fact that dentsu India is steadily emerging into becoming one of India’s greatest creative powerhouses. Dentsu Webchutney and Taproot Dentsu have already established a massive benchmark for everyone within the network and for many across the industry with their superlative and consistent performance. I am extremely proud of how our teams have shown such powerful resilience and stayed strong even in these challenging times.”
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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.
