Brands
Masters Champions League signs Oxigen Wallet as title sponsor
NEW DELHI: The Dubai based Masters Champions League (MCL) has signed up Oxigen Wallet as the title sponsor for its inaugural edition, which is slated to start later this month.
The Oxigen Masters Champions League will feature six teams of retired international cricketers and will kick start on 28 January with the final match to be staged on 13 February.
The tournament will see Oxigen and MCL cooperate extensively in terms of sports events, on-ground activations and marketing campaigns.
The inaugural matches are due to take place at Dubai International Cricket Stadium and Sharjah Cricket Stadium.
Grand Midwest Sports, the group that conceptualised and began the tournament did so with an aim to take cricket to a higher level across the UAE.
Sharing his thoughts on the occasion, MCL chairman Zafar Shah said, “We are delighted to have Oxigen joining us as the title sponsor for MCL, which will now be called Oxigen MCL. They are one of the most innovative brands in the world for pioneering the genre of wallet led payments in the online and offline industry. Oxigen as a brand has in a very short span created a niche and legacy in their market. I am sure this will be a long and enriching affiliation for both stakeholders.”
Last week, Sony Pictures Networks (SPN) hopped on board as the official broadcaster for the Indian sub-continent. The MCL has also secured Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the current captain of the Indian national cricket team, as brand ambassador.
The first match will take place between two former legendary teammates namely, Sourav Ganguly from Team Libra Legends and Virender Sehwag from Team Gemini Arabians.
On becoming the title sponsors of MCL2020, Oxigen Services chairman and managing director Pramod Saxena said, “Oxigen is proud to partner with Masters Champions League 2020 as their Title Sponsor. Our love for cricket is a constant as it connects us to the masses being a cricket loving nation. With MCL 20-20, we will further Oxigen’s global reach by touching the lives of the NRIs living in the Gulf and other parts of the world, who can fulfil the needs of small payments for their families in India for money transfers, recharges and utility payments.”
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.
