MAM
Kolkata gets a Big pat on the back at this year’s Impact Awards
MUMBAI: It was a night of spotlights, salutes and standing ovations as Big FM rolled out the red carpet for Kolkata’s most impactful players one trophy at a time. The third edition of the BIG Impact Awards Kolkata, hosted by Big FM, lit up the Vivanta hotel with stories of disruption, innovation and deep-rooted social impact. From real estate visionaries and restaurateurs to neurosurgeons and literary pioneers, 23 exceptional awardees were honoured for redefining excellence in their respective fields.
In keeping with the event’s tagline VG T Recognising Unconventional Excellence, the awards tipped their hats to businesses that are bold enough to break the mould and brave enough to build something bigger. Presenting the awards were top dignitaries including Debashis Kumar (MLA & Mayor-in-Council) and Partha Bhowmik (MP). Acclaimed actor Abir Chatterjee added to the evening’s sparkle as the special guest.
The event wasn’t short on star power either. Guests included Sudipa Chatterjee, Churni Ganguly, Rooqma Roy, Shruti Das, Souraseni Maitra, Basabdatta Kar, chef Rongon Neogi, and composer Indradeep Dasgupta, turning the evening into a full-blown celebration of Kolkata’s cultural and entrepreneurial fabric.
The list of winners offered a crash course in Kolkata’s rich and varied brilliance from the best biryani and pizza joints to top-notch hospitals and publishing houses. Narayan Banerjee was crowned Healthcare Influencer of the Year, while Nadia Cassam rose to confectionery fame. JIS University and Atri Group bagged honours in education and real estate respectively, and Soham Chakraborty & team took home the award for Best Hair Replacement Centre.
Two special mentions went to Arindam Mukherjee, who clinched awards in both industrial automation and carbon emission reductio proof that innovation often wears multiple hats.
Speaking on the occasion Big FM COO Sunil Kumaran said, “These awards aren’t just a celebration of business success, they’re about resilience, ingenuity and heart. At BIG FM, we believe honouring today’s innovators inspires tomorrow’s trailblazers.”
Supporting partners for the event included LTK Industries (Fashion Partner), Tata Curvv, Saini MG Motor Kolkata, Krishna Chandra Dutta (cookme) Pvt Ltd., Suzuki (Ride Partner) and Glengrant (Celebration Partner).
With this year’s resounding success, Big Impact Awards Kolkata continues to prove that when it comes to business with heart, Kolkata means kaarigar, creator and changemaker in equal measure.
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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.
