Brands
McDonald’s shows that you’re never too old for toys
MUMBAI: McDonald’s Happy Meal was best known for the toy that came with the pack. Now, the brand is allowing any meal to be made into a Happy Meal by adding a toy for just Rs 35.
Inspired by the hundreds of entries McDonald’s received for the biggest Happy Meal fan search, the campaign focuses on kids of all ages — a unique search for the biggest Happy Meal Toy collectors in India!
Conceptualised by Leo Burnett, the digital campaign brings to the fore the heart-warming story of Sunil Chawla, a 35-year-old man, based in Bangalore. Sunil has, over the years, collected over a whopping 300 Happy Meal toys! The film shows Sunil speaking fondly about how his obsession with the Happy Meal toys began. He describes his possessiveness and how over the years he’s made sure to travel far and wide just to complete his toy collection.
McDonald’s India senior vice president of strategy, innovation and capability Seema Arora Nambiar says, “Since the launch of the iconic Happy Meals in India in 1997, it has grown in popularity. The toys that our customers have collected bring back the happy memories created over food. We wanted to celebrate the emotional connect that our customers have with the brand through their Happy Meal toys, which is why we have featured a real life Happy Meal toy collector and his story in this ad film!”
Leo Burnett South Asia chief creative officer Rajdeepak Das adds, “There is a child in all of us, and we keep indulging this child with its favourite treats however old we may be. McDonald’s has just made it easier for everyone to embrace this child. We don’t stop liking toys, for instance, just because we grow up, do we? The joy of collecting toys knows no age. This simple idea got us to the story of Sunil, and we knew it was a story that our consumers would instantly resonate with.”
The new campaign employs digital and social media as touch points.
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.
