Brands
Suzuki Motorcycle launches Let’s in Karnartaka
BENGALURU: Suzuki Motorcycles India (SMIL) announced the third leg of the south India launch of its new personal scooter “Let’s” in Bengaluru.
The scooter was earlier launched on 6 May in Chennai and on 12 May in Kochi. Next on the agenda is Andhra Pradesh, to be followed by Pune and Ahmedabad, and, later on the north and the eastern parts of the country.
The company reveals that for Karnataka, it has booked 52,360 seconds and over 2,200 spots across leading television channels and 108,000 seconds and 4,320 spots across leading radio stations of major cities in the state. Besides, SMIL has planned over 50 insertions across leading newspapers in the state and advertisement play outs in 150 cinema theaters across key cities in Karnataka. The 360 degree advertising plan also includes hoardings, ads on bus shelters, demo vans and presence across social media platforms like facebook, titter, youtube, etc.
“The media plan has been chalked out with our media buying agency, Brand Serve. The new creative commercial with Parineeti Chopra has been done by Publicis Capital, the creative agency for the brand,” says SMIL’s national marketing head Anu Anamika.
“Typically, our marketing spends are around 20 per cent of revenues, this includes advertising budgets as well as other marketing activities, and we will also be doing 360 advertising pan-India once the product launch is rolled out across the nation,” further informs Anamika.
The company plans to target university students in cities, beginners who have just got their license and young professionals in urban areas with Let’s, and plans to sell around 100,000 of them this fiscal. SMIL national head – marketing Atul Gupta says, “We have 12 per cent market share in India and a 16 per cent market share in Karnataka in the scooters segment. With the Let’s launch, we envisage it to grow to 15 per cent in India and 22 per cent in Karnataka.”
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.
