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Kings XI Punjab gets 14 sponsors on board, this year
MUMBAI: Starting the upcoming IPL season on a positive note, Kings XI Punjab, has announced Tata Motors Prima as its title sponsor.
The franchisee has also on board Trip Factory, McDowells, Britannia, Pepsi, Flying Machine, Prayag Bath Fittings, Frontline Securities, R N Sports and Amazon as their new sponsors, while it continues its existing relationship with Arise India, ACC Cement, Kingfisher and TK Sports for this year.
Kings XI Punjab COO Fraser Castellino said, “I am pleased to have Tata Motors Prima as our title sponsor and look forward to a long and fruitful relationship with them. I would also like to welcome our other partners on board and thank them for putting their faith in the team. With such associations this year, the franchises’ excitement and energy levels have further been boosted for the tournament. I am hopeful that these partnerships will be mutually beneficial to all the parties involved.”
“Tata Motors Prima is delighted to sponsor the Kings XI Punjab team, one of the most exciting franchises in the Indian Premier League for this upcoming season. We bring the same passionate commitment to our customers as this star line-up brings to their cricket. We wish “The Lions” the very best for this season of IPL,” said Tata Motors commercial vehicles executive director Ravi Pisharody.
Tata Motors Prima is the title sponsor while Trip Factory and Prayag Bath Fittings are official team sponsors. Arise India has come on board as the mobile handset partner and Kingfisher as the good times partner. Britannia is the official goodness partner, while Pepsi is the official beverage partner. It has associated with Flying Machine as the official style partner, Frontline Securities as the official security partner, RN Sports as the official talent hunt partner, TK Sport as the official kitting partner and Amazon as the official online partner. McDowells and ACC Cement continue to be the official team partners.
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.
