Brands
Gulf Oil inks partnership pact with Manchester United
MUMBAI: Gulf Oil Lubricants India Ltd (GOLIL) announced that its parent company Gulf Oil International, a part of the Hinduja Group, had entered into its largest ever single partnership with Manchester United to become its global sponsor and official lubricant cum fuel retail partner till end of 2019 football season.
Spanning over three seasons, this multi-year partnership was signed by Gulf Oil International vice president Frank Rutten and Manchester United commercial director Jamie Reigle. “We were working on this deal for over a year and a half. International football is the biggest platform in the world, and Manchester United a celebrated brand, we couldn’t find a more fitting partner for association given our ambitious target across the world for 2020,” said Gulf Oil International vice president Frank Rutten.
The deal will give Gulf Oil International access to Manchester United assets including the club crest and player images and Gulf’s distinctive orange disc will feature on the Club’s digital perimeter boards during Premier League, FA Cup and League Cup matches at Old Trafford though it does not include jersey presence for the brand.
The company’s partnership with Manchester United is in addition to its existing global tie-ups with Milwaukee BMW, World Superbikes, the World Endurance Championship with the Gulf Racing Team and Porsche.
Commenting on this partnership’s mileage in the Indian market, GOLIL managing director Ravi Chawla added, “Gulf Oil’s association with the world of sports has been phenomenal right from motorsports to cricket, where we have partnered with the best of the best. It was therefore logical for us to team up with Manchester United in order to reiterate our brand’s core values of endurance, quality and passion. We look forward to leverage this interesting mix of football and cricket and leverage this partnership to increase consumer engagement with the brand, create new and exciting communication platforms that will emphasis the customer value propositions.”
The company expects the tie-up with Manchester United to augment its long-term association with cricket for enhancement and further strengthening of its brand equity amongst its customers, especially for personal mobility consumers who use two wheelers or passenger cars.
After cricket, football is the second most popular sport in India. In recent years with the emergence of domestic leagues, the popularity of the sport is growing exponentially to reach youth, not just in the metros but in the tier-1 and tier-2 cities as well. Moreover, viewership of English Premier League & other football tournaments is gaining momentum in India.
The partnership marks a further step in Gulf’s intent to strengthen its brand presence globally as well as enable it to engage with Manchester United’s worldwide fan base, including 325 million followers in Asia, which Gulf sees as a major focus area with a strong presence in India and rapidly developing businesses in China, the Middle East and Indonesia.
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.
