Brands
Ceat purchases Camso tyre brand & business for $225 million from Michelin
MUMBAI: RPG group tyre company Ceat has sealed a new acquisition. It has entered into an all cash agreement to acquire Michelin’s Camso brand’s off Highway construction bias tyres and track business. The cost of the deal: an estimated $225 million. The Camso brand did business worth $213 million in calendar year 2023 and Ceat is getting its global ownership along with two state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities in Sri Lanka.
Camso is a premium brand in construction equipment tyre and tracks with strong equity and market position in the EU and north American aftermarket and original equipment segments. The brand will be permanently assigned to Ceat across categories after a three-year licensing period, expanding its product portfolio in the high margin off-highway tyres (OHT) and tracks segments, which includes agriculture tyres and tracks, harvester tyres and tracks, power sports tracks and material handling tyres. Michelin will thus exit from the activities related to compact line bias tyres and construction tracks.
The acquisition is a significant milestone for Ceat in its ambition to become a leading global player in the high margin OHT segment. Over the past decade, it has been focusing on building that business, which now consists of 900 plus product offerings and covers around 84 per cent of the range requirement in the agricultural segment. Camso will give Ceat the ability to widen its product base into tracks and construction tyres. More importantly, it will give it access to a global customer base including over 40 international OEMs and premium international OHT distributors. Ceat brings in the ability for Camso to expand to other segments such as agriculture tyres. Both brands are highly complementary in their positioning and capabilities.
The transaction will be subject to regulatory approvals from relevant authorities.
RPG Enterprises vice-chairman Anant Goenka opined that the Camso acquisition is likely to catalyse the company towards becoming a global tyre maker. Said he: “Camso is an industry leading brand in the off-highway tyre market built through many years of investment in creating product superiority and manufacturing excellence, nurtured through the Michelin parentage. Most importantly, we found a great cultural alignment between Camso and Ceat because of our TQM way of working.”
Ceat MD & CEO Arnab Banerjee added that the Camso’s OHT tyres brand fitted excellently with Ceat and will help improving the company’s margin profile. “ Access to the most premium customers, a high-quality brand and a qualified global workforce is what excites us the most about this acquisition. The track segment is a technologically superior segment with a limited number of global players. We also found high synergies between the two brands, Ceat and Camso, and are confident that both will benefit tremendously from their complementary capabilities and positioning..” he said.
Michelin senior vice president beyond road business Line, Nour Bouhassoun said: “Michelin firmly believes that Ceat is the right fit to carry on our bias tyres and tracks for compact construction equipment business. Both our companies are fully committed to ensuring a smooth transition for our employees and business continuity for our customers and suppliers. With this operation, Michelin is continuing to reshape its beyond road business, in line with the group’s sustainable growth strategy.”
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.
