MAM
Incred backs kabaddi with Jaipur Pink Panthers and Gujarat Giants tie-up
MUMBAI: Credit where it’s due, kabaddi just got a fresh financial backer. Incred Financial Services Limited (Incred Finance), the tech-led NBFC known for its risk-analytics edge, has partnered with Jaipur Pink Panthers and Gujarat Giants as Associate Partner for the 2025 Pro Kabaddi League (PKL), starting 29 August.
The move marks Incred’s push beyond cricket where cricketer Shreyas Iyer is already its brand face and into a sport that’s as desi as it gets. With kabaddi boasting more than 3 crore viewers and popularity stretching from metros to Tier 2, Tier 3 and rural markets, the partnership aligns neatly with Incred’s mission to extend credit access to aspirational India.
The NBFC, with 140 plus branches and 2,500 plus employees, serves individuals and MSMEs with products spanning personal, education, MSME business, loan against property, and digital merchant loans. By associating with kabaddi, Incred hopes to amplify its reach in the underserved segments it champions.
“InCred has always stood for resilience and ambition qualities that kabaddi reflects beautifully,” said Incred Finance founder & CEO Bhupinder Singh noting the sport’s deep grassroots connect. Incred Finance group head of marketing Radhika Zingade added that kabaddi’s energy and ethos mirror the brand’s own, calling the association with two powerhouse teams “a natural step.”
And powerhouse is no exaggeration. Jaipur Pink Panthers, owned by Abhishek Bachchan, are two-time PKL champions with a consistent record of title runs. Meanwhile, Gujarat Giants made headlines this season by signing Mohammadreza Shadloui Chiyaneh for Rs 2.23 crore, the highest-ever bid in PKL history.
With 12 teams battling it out across Vizag, Jaipur, Chennai, and Delhi, PKL Season 12 promises fierce tackles and fresh storylines. For Incred, it’s not just a game of sport, it’s a high-stakes play to connect with India’s heartland, where both credit and kabaddi matter most.
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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.
