Brands
Rohit Sharma returns as the face of ixigo Trains
MUMBAI: ixigo Trains has decided to keep the good runs going. India’s leading AI-powered travel platform has renewed its partnership with cricket superstar Rohit Sharma as brand ambassador for a second straight year.
First signed on in November 2024, Rohit has become the friendly face of ixigo Trains, helping the brand strike a chord with everyday rail travellers across the country. His earlier campaign, which saw him play a witty, rap-loving ticketman, turned heads for its light-hearted tone and clever spotlight on features such as live train status, route updates, seat availability and hassle-free bookings.
The renewed association signals ixigo Trains’ continued focus on trust, reliability and innovation for India’s next billion users. The platform is betting big on traveller-first features like free cancellation, food on train, alternate travel plans and instant refunds, all designed to make long journeys feel a little less complicated.
ixigo Trains CEO Dinesh Kumar Kotha, said Rohit’s presence has added both credibility and spark to the brand. He noted that over the past year, the partnership has helped ixigo connect more deeply with users while reinforcing its mission to make train travel simpler, smarter and more dependable.
Rohit Sharma echoed the sentiment, saying he was pleased to continue working with a brand that focuses on solving real problems for travellers. He added that ixigo’s practical, innovation-led approach made the partnership a natural fit.
As ixigo Trains expands its offerings and reach, Rohit Sharma remains central to its story, standing in for trust, consistency and the shared ambition of making train journeys better for millions of Indians, whether they are cricket fans or not.
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.
