Brands
Innovation-led consumer activations keep kabaddi enthusiasts hooked
MUMBAI: While the action on the mat gripped the entire nation, Vivo Pro Kabaddi Season 5 also innovatively engaged with its fans, off the mat. In line with the vision of making kabaddi an accessible and engaging sport for everyone, the league organised a host of appealing marketing activations for kabaddi enthusiasts across the country.
‘Team Up – Lift the Cup’ was the mantra for fans, as they took up the Pull Room Challenge, getting first-hand taste of Le Panga. The challenge — which is under way till 28 October — involved a replica of the Vivo Pro Kabaddi Season 5 trophy placed inside a locked chamber which could only be opened when a team of seven individuals, just like in a kabaddi team, attempt to unlock it. Placed in multiple locations across Mumbai and Bangalore, the activation saw scores of kabaddi enthusiasts trying to strategise and come up with innovative ways to accomplish the seemingly difficult task.
Meanwhile, in Bangalore, the league also partnered with 30 pubs to ensure a wholesome and enjoyable kabaddi experience for fans as they unwind their day with an action-packed evening of kabaddi with their friends. These included kabaddi screenings and branding for the Vivo Pro Kabaddi across all 30 locations.
Vivo Pro Kabaddi also tied up exclusively with one of Mumbai’s oldest and most visited mandal, Girgaoncha Raja on the occasion of Ganesh Chaturthi. This included creating a special VIP room, organising engagement activities and the showstopper- installation of Ganesha playing Kabaddi apart from other branding initiatives. This was accompanied with 20 more Ganesh Mandal tie ups in a total of six cities.
The path-breaking campaign was conceptualised and managed by The Brand Brewery – a leading experiential marketing agency. TBB came up with this classic campaign to bust myths like kabaddi places more emphasis on brawn than brain and reiterate instead that the sport is a combination of strategy, teamwork and athleticism.
The campaign also went viral on social media and scored high on the popularity meter.
Link to the Video: Star Sports Pull Room Challenge
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.
