MAM
CEAT announces long-term partnership with Bayer 04 Leverkusen
Mumbai: CEAT, a tyre manufacturer, has announced a partnership with Bayer 04 Leverkusen, the Bundesliga champions and DFB Cup winners. This two-year partnership designates CEAT as the premium tyre partner for the next two seasons, effective immediately, and will run until 30 June 2026.
CEAT MD and CEO Arnab Banerjee said, “We are thrilled to embark on this long-term partnership with Bayer 04 Leverkusen. This is especially significant as both CEAT and Bayer 04 Leverkusen boast rich heritage, each with over 100 years of history, making this partnership a fusion of two historic brands.”
CEAT CMO Lakshmi Narayanan added, “We have a strong global presence with our operations and state-of-the-art R&D facility in Germany and through this partnership, we gain the opportunity to connect with our German consumers. We believe this collaboration will also resonate strongly with Indian football audiences, inspiring passion and support for both, the sport and our brand in this vibrant market.”
CEAT is the new official premium and tyre partner of Bayer 04 Leverkusen Werkself. The contractual rights of CEAT as the new official premium and tyre partner include extensive TV presence through LED perimeter boards, cam carpets on the touchlines, and substitution boards at Werkself matches at the BayArena. Additionally, CEAT will have a prominent presence on media backdrops at Bundesliga press conferences and during matches. The official Bayer 04 Leverkusen team bus will be equipped with CEAT’s premium tyres.
“We are delighted to welcome CEAT as a new strong, international partner at Bayer 04,” explains Bayer 04 Leverkusen Fußball GmbH chief marketing and innovation officer Markus Breglec at the double winners. “Just like us, CEAT operates on international terrain. We are united as partners by our ambition to drive innovation and master challenges in a highly competitive environment.”
CEAT’s contribution to sports in India and beyond:
CEAT is a proud supporter of sports and recognizes the important role that sports play in the development of society. The company has a long-standing association with Indian cricket through strategic partnerships with the Tata IPL and Tata WPL which is one of the Top 5 Sporting Leagues in the World, with bat sponsorships and collaborations with leading cricketers. The partnership with Bayer 04 Leverkusen underpins its commitment to soccer and the expansion of its presence in international sport. In recent years, CEAT has also extended its support to various motorsports, including the popular Indian Supercross Racing League and other riding events across the country.
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.
