MAM
Publicis Worldwide India hires Radhika Burman as VP – strategic planning
NEW DELHI: Publicis Worldwide India has brought on Radhika Burman as vice president – strategic planning. She will be based out of New Delhi and will report into BBH-Publicis Worldwide India MD & chief strategy officer Sanjay Sharma.
In her role, Burman will lead the strategy mandate for the New Delhi office, spearheading the strategic planning function for existing clients as well as driving growth through new business for the region. She will play a crucial role in the agency’s growth ambitions with an objective to deliver solutions driven by a well-rounded view on consumer insights that can be translated into powerful and actionable brand insights.
Sharma said, “In today’s complex and fast changing world, our clients need strong strategic partnerships more than ever. Radhika is an exceptional strategic mind who has the experience, expertise and energy to partner our clients in providing the right solutions for today’s challenges. In the coming days I see her playing a pivotal role in driving the growth and creative agenda for Publicis Worldwide in New Delhi.”
Burman has over 11 years of experience both on the client side as well as across network agencies. In her last role, she was manager – strategy and consumer insights at Platinum Guild International and played a central role in the strategic planning process to build the platinum jewellery business for India by effectively analysing and translating consumer and trade research into insightful strategies. Prior to that, she has worked at FCB and JWT and was part of the strategic planning team that worked on brands such as Zee, PepsiCo, Hero, and Cargill among others.
“I am excited to be part of this new phase at Publicis, and very thrilled at the opportunity to work cohesively on an integrated communications approach to deliver growth and success for our partners,” said Burman. “The focus will be to create seamless and consistent experiences for the brands we work on, across multiple channels and touch points. Given the challenging times we are in, the need to deliver unified marketing and messaging strategies has never been stronger. Our efforts will be to give our partners just that.”
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.
