Brands
L’oréal Professionnel sets guinness record with ‘India’s biggest hair colour moment’
MUMBAI: L’oréal Professionnel has literally coloured outside the lines, bringing together 422 hairstylists and 422 models to set a ‘Guinness world records’ title for “Most people colouring hair” in India. The event, Hair Color Coders 2025, turned a Mumbai hall into the country’s biggest salon, celebrating the artistry, creativity, and skill of India’s professional hairdressing community.
Global Color ambassador Min Kim and actress Kritika Kamra were at the heart of the record-breaking day, demonstrating advanced hair colour techniques while showcasing ‘Iconic browns,’ the brand’s trend of the year. From glossing to balayage and tonal layering, hairdressers proved their prowess, blending education with a dazzling live showcase.
The event spanned a massive one lakh square feet space at Nesco, featuring 60 backwashes and over 5,000 hair colour tubes. It created a buzz online too, generating over 1,000 social mentions in a single day, highlighting the hairstylists’ skill and creativity while giving them a platform to inspire peers and clients alike.
“Hair Color Coders 2025 showcases our ability to set global benchmarks while celebrating India’s hairstyling talent,” said L’oréal India, director, professional products division, Zeenia Bastani. “It was a mega masterclass in creativity, skill, and sheer passion for hairdressing.”
In the months leading up to the event, participants honed their craft through intensive masterclasses, ensuring every transformation reflected precision, artistry, and innovation. L’oréal professionnel India, head of education, Priya Kasthuri Rangan added, “This platform allowed hairstylists to upskill, showcase expertise, and embrace a community built on passion and commitment.”
The day ended with a show-stopping makeover for Kritika Kamra, her hair emerging vibrant, glossy, and perfectly styled in iconic browns. With Hair Color Coders 2025, L’oréal professionnel not only celebrated a record but reinforced its mission: to elevate professional hairdressing in India, combining education, creativity, and innovation in one unforgettable moment.
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.






