MAM
Hasker to head Nielsen’s Media Product Leadership
MUMBAI: Steve Hasker will join US media research company Nielsen as president, Media Product Leadership and Advertiser Solutions with effect from next month.
Hasker is currently a partner at McKinsey and Company’s Global Media, Entertainment and Information practice. In this new position, Hasker will direct strategy and development of Nielsen’s media products and services, including measurement of television, online, and mobile media as well as the company’s ongoing innovation around cross-media measurement. Hasker says, “I look forward to working with media companies and advertisers using the breadth of Nielsen’s assets to better plan and measure media across the Internet, TV, and mobile, and to enhance the direct relationships between marketers and consumers that will optimise advertising investments.” Hasker will also oversee Advertiser Solutions, a new business unit to help advertisers deliver the right messages to the right consumers, and improve marketing effectiveness and return on investment. In this respect, Hasker will work closely with Alan Gould and Ken Orkin, co-CEOs of Nielsen IAG, who will head Advertiser Solutions. Avers Nielsen CEO David Calhoun, “We are extremely pleased to add a leader of Steve Hasker’s caliber to guide our product efforts across media and advertiser services. This appointment, as well as the creation of Advertiser Solutions, is a significant next step in Nielsen’s continued delivery of insights into the connected consumer.”
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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.
