MAM
Usha International announces a new sewing machine campaign with actor Keerthy Suresh
MUMBAI: Usha International, one of India’s leading consumer durables companies, has launched a new media campaign for Usha sewing machines featuring the brand ambassador and National Film Award winner 2018 Keerthy Suresh.
Aimed at amplifying consumer connect and engagement within the southern region, the 50 second television commercial has been launched in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. In the TV commercial southern star Keerthy is featured as a blushing bride, who enters her new home and is welcomed with the familiar and warm embrace of an Usha sewing machine gifted to her by her in-laws. It captures the bond between a daughter-in-law and her in-laws beautifully. A separate 10 sec promo commercial will also be aired to announce the promotional offer of free Sewing Kit worth Rs. 500/- with every Usha Janome sewing machine.
Commenting on the new campaign, Parveen Sahni, Business Head, Usha Sewing Machines, said, “The TV commercial is an effort to engage with southern markets for maximum reach and impact. With this campaign we are looking to connect with the consumer and bring to life the joy that comes with unleashing one’s creativity using a sewing machine. We hope to increase our brand salience as well as connect with consumers and sewing enthusiasts within these markets.”
The new TV commercial will be aired on a mix of top vernacular general entertainment and news channels in an 8-week campaign starting 21st March onwards and will be complemented by an exciting print plan featuring Keerthy across top women and vernacular magazines with high readership in the region. The TV ads will also be aggressively promoted across all relevant vernacular digital platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and OTT’s like Hotstar, Zee5 etc.
The TV commercial can be viewed here: (https://youtu.be/LUIQiuDadKQ)
TV commercial credits
Agency: Goldilocks
Production house: Old School Films
Director: Gautham Menon
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.
