Brands
Spirit of expansion: AABL takes its premium portfolio to Jharkhand
MADHYA PRADESH: Associated Alcohols & Breweries Ltd (AABL) is going east. The Indore-based spirits maker has uncorked its premium portfolio in Jharkhand, bringing Nicobar Indian Dry Gin, Titanium Triple Distilled Vodka, and whiskeys Hillfort and Central Province to a state it reckons is ready for the good stuff.
The move, announced on 11 December, marks another notch in AABL’s strategy to colonise high-potential markets across India. Jharkhand, with its growing urban centres and rising disposable incomes, presents what the company calls “strong growth potential”—corporate speak for “people there want to drink better.”
“We are pleased to introduce our premium portfolio to the Jharkhand market,” says AABL managing director Prasann Kumar Kedia. “The launch marks another significant step in our strategy to expand our national footprint.”
The company is betting that Jharkhand’s “discerning customers” will develop a taste for its craft credentials. Nicobar’s dry gin aims to ride the juniper wave that’s swept urban India, whilst Titanium’s triple-distilled vodka promises the sort of smoothness that makes morning-after regrets slightly less painful. Meanwhile, Hillfort and Central Province target the whiskey drinkers who’ve outgrown the usual suspects.
AABL, which trades on the BSE (scrip code 507526) and NSE (symbol ASALCBR), has been systematically building its presence beyond its Madhya Pradesh heartland. The company operates from Khodigram in Khargone district, where it presumably distills the good stuff before dispatching it to new frontiers.
Whether Jharkhand develops a taste for premium spirits or sticks with the familiar remains to be seen. But AABL is clearly banking on eastern ambitions—one well-crafted tipple at a time.
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.
