Brands
Vivo supports #BeBoldForChange
MUMBAI: Vivo, a premium global smartphone brand, aims at inspiring women to #BeBoldForChange with a tribute video starring popular celebrity Bani J which lends support to the International Women’s Day 2017 campaign. The video focuses on breaking stereotypes and symbolizes a woman’s individuality and her bold side. It highlights how every woman has her own story and she should be bold enough to stand for what she believes.
Vivo India encourages women to be proud of their individualistic identity even in a mere selfie. A #PerfectSelfie is not about how the world wants to see you but it’s about who you are, so let your picture speak your identity.
Vivo India CMO Vivek Zhang said, #BeBoldForChange is the campaign that not just breaks the stereotypes that have been prevailing in the society, but also celebrates womanhood and encourages them to take pride in their distinctive identity and embrace their bold side. Bani J is a popular celebrity who has broken the stereotype surrounding women. Her flamboyance, well-built muscular body and popularity among the youth made her an ideal choice for this campaign.”
Bani J shared her excitement for the campaign and said, “This has been one of the most kickass campaign that I could be a part of and the tagline #BeBoldForChange truly stands for it. I had an absolute blast shooting for this campaign and it stands for everything that I had believed in which is to not really care about other people and how they want you to behave because they judge you no matter what. All women in general when they watch this will feel empowered and do what they wish to do and whatever makes them happy. And at last, I would wish all the women out there a very happy Women’s Day.”
The campaign further resonates the brand’s belief towards a woman’s individuality and her potential that must be acknowledged and deeply cherished in every society.
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.
