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Times of India & Healthians celebrate National Health Check-up Day with free health check-ups on
MUMBAI: To celebrate India’s first National Health Check-up Day, instituted by the Times of India in association with Healthians, people across seven major Indian cities got free health check-ups to educate them about the importance of periodic check-ups.
As a part of the observations, TOI and Healthians instated a total of 11 checkup camps across seven major locations – Delhi, Gurgaon, Pune, Bangalore, Mumbai, Thane, and Noida. The activity looked to impact and enable more than 500 families to consider preventive healthcare measures.
As of now, only 9.6 per cent of the overall healthcare expenditure goes towards preventive healthcare. The National Health Check-up Day is a constituent of the Healthy India Fit India (HiFi) movement organised, a joint undertaking by TOI and Healthians, that aims to encourage people to adopt preventive healthcare as a lifestyle choice to help them avoid significant repercussions to their health and wallets.
Speaking on the initiative, Healthians founder and CEO Deepak Sahni said, "The idea of dedicating a day for health stemmed from the behavior of millennials, both men and women in the age group of 29-40 years. They are so busy in their careers and improving the quality of their lives, that health is often ignored. It’s only when they cross a certain life stage, or when someone close suffers a health problem they realise what they have lost in terms of health. We want people to realise that before it’s too late, their health needs their attention to be able to avoid illnesses.”
The HiFi initiative was commenced with a pilot campaign that saw over 3 lakh people from across the country pledging to undertake health check-ups on 1 December, signifying its impact on raising awareness about healthcare.
Multiple celebrities including famous Indian boxers Mary Kom and Vijender Singh, cricketer Sushma Verma, Table Tennis player Manika Batra, Bollywood actresses Sameera Reddy, Chavvi Mittal, and Nisha Rawal had also pledged to undertake health check-ups to celebrate the National Health Checkup Day.
Times Internet COO Puneet Gupt said, “We firmly believe in supporting causes with initiatives that truly matter. Observing an annual National Health Day is a part of our mission to help India grow stronger by enabling every Indian to pledge for a healthier version of themselves through preventive health checkups. We are excited to partner with Healthians to be a part of this journey to call for a healthier and happier India.”
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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.
