“I am the first employee of Samsung R&D in India. I feel quite accomplished today as we complete 25 years of R&D and improving consumer lifestyles in India. This is all because great effort and innovation of our people very good support from our partners and love & trust of our consumers. Thank you for bringing Samsung to this point. From now as India is poised for the big leap we will do our part to contribute to this growth. We will use our technology innovation and consumer focus to do our part. We call it Powering Digital India. We will do our best. Please support us. Thank you,” said Dipesh Shah, MD, Samsung Research Institute – Bangalore.

This team at SRI-B, Samsung’s second biggest R&D center outside South Korea and one of three Samsung R&D centers in India, has been working from home for the past couple of weeks. Now, they are already toying with the idea of developing a filter that will suppress noise from open kitchens during video chats from home.

“This new way of life has thrown up its own challenges. But every challenge provides us an opportunity to rediscover ourselves, to think of how we can get better, how we can transform the society. Every small innovation counts,” Shah told Samsung Newsroom India. “At Samsung, we will continue to be at the forefront of creating meaningful innovations that would benefit everybody,” he adds.

Dipesh, born to Gujarati parents, but a Bangalorean at heart, was the first employee at Samsung R&D Center which started as SISO way back in 1996. He rose through the ranks to become its Managing Director. A people’s man, he has been following the WFH phenomenon very closely to understand employee behavior, customer needs, and so on.

These days, he says, he is rediscovering the value of relationships, as he spends more time with family. His parents live with him; his brother stays two blocks away in the same apartment complex. “My brother and I are into music. We have not met for the past few days, but all of us are in touch. Twenty of us neighbours even play Housie (Tambola) using group chats.”

“I am amazed by how our VPN and mobile networks are all holding up. Everything is working seamlessly. We may be staying apart, yet we are together, thanks to our smartphones, tabs, laptops, networking apps and social media,” he says.

His advice to young minds is that this is the perfect time to think, predict and innovate!

A group of kids in his younger daughter’s school recently connected through video conferencing to sing for a choir. “Isn’t it amazing? They were all home and connected by their home networks, and they made a whole song and uploaded it on YouTube!”

Shah is enjoying this journey of rediscovering himself. Apart from getting to bond more with family – playing card games, chess and even Monopoly – he is contributing to family chores, merrily mopping floors, as a daily exercise. And he has more time to pursue his passion – singing and music!

Three Mantras to Young Minds:

• Be positive, make best use of this time
• Think of meaningful innovations
• Pursue your passions

(Next Monday in Rediscover Yourself, we will speak to another Samsung India leader to share his or her experience. And tomorrow in another weekly column called Quick Tech, senior technology writer Mala Bhargava will tell us about her favourite Samsung innovation and share some interesting tips for #WFH. Stay inspired).

Mr. Dipesh Shah’s interview with India Newsroom team, published last week, has received good reviews from viewers. In the first part of the interview, Mr. Shah talked about his journey from being the first employee of Samsung R&D in India to becoming the Managing Director of Samsung R&D Institute –Bangalore (SRI-B), Samsung’s biggest R&D facility outside Korea.

He spoke about the fun he had over the last 22 years, working across projects and with different teams, the high points of his career and the immense amount of knowledge he has acquired at Samsung.

In this second and final part of the interview, Mr. Shah talks about the importance of SRI-B in the Samsung Universe. SRI-B is very strong in three key technologies- modem, multimedia and intelligence, Mr. Shah said, adding that these technologies play an important role in Samsung’s flagship products.

SRI-B is also making significant contributions to Samsung’s ‘Make for India’ initiative, which provides localised innovations for Indian consumers. Today, SRI-B’s local innovations are incorporated in Samsung Pay, Samsung’s flagship mobile payments platform, and My Galaxy, an app that provides amazing content, unparalleled convenience and expert care. SRI-B is also doing cutting edge work on Tizen, Samsung’s own operating system.

SRI-B’s engineers get to work on cutting edge technology and many different products and services, which helps them move from ‘how and when’ part of journey to ‘why and what’ part, Mr. Shah said.

Mr. Dipesh Shah, Managing Director, Samsung R&D Institute –Bangalore

India Newsroom team caught up with Samsung R&D Institute –Bangalore (SRI-B) Managing Director Mr. Dipesh Shah, who two decades ago started as the first employee of Samsung R&D in India. Over these years, Samsung has grown to become India’s biggest and most trusted electronics brand.

Today, Samsung employs nearly 70,000 employees and has two plants, five R&D centres and one design centre in the country.

SRI-B is Samsung’s biggest R&D facility outside Korea. It carries out cutting-edge research across multiple domains and has the distinction of filing the highest number of patents in the IT sector in India.

Listen to Mr. Shah talk about Samsung’s journey in India, which is co-terminus with his career at Samsung. We will bring you the final part of interview with Mr. Shah soon.

Tizen-based Z4 was launched in India last week

Samsung launched Z4, the Tizen-powered 4G smartphone globally last week. Significantly, India was the first to get the phone, and rightly so! With over 500 million feature phone users, the Z4 is the perfect stepping stone for Indian consumers looking to shift to a smartphone.

Since the launch of the maiden Tizen smartphone, Z1, in 2015, several millions of Tizen phones have sold, with consumers, especially first time smartphone buyers, giving it’s easy to use interface a thumbs up.

The Z4, which comes with ‘Double’ benefits as far as camera, flash and style go, is expected to drive up Tizen adoption in the country.

India Newsroom team spoke to Mr. Dipesh Shah, who as the Managing Director of Samsung R&D Bangalore, oversees much of the cutting-edge work involving Tizen.

Mr. Dipesh Shah is the Managing Director of Samsung R&D Bangalore

“India is unique because even today about 50% of new phones sold in the market are feature phones. Compare that to China which has gone past features phones three years ago,” said Mr. Shah.

Tizen is rightly positioned for the first-time smartphone users as its platform is very light and very fast.

“As the market leader, we at Samsung consider it our priority to facilitate this journey towards smartphones. Our affordable Tizen series has been instrumental in catalyzing the smartphone upgrade,” Mr. Asim Warsi, Senior Vice President, Samsung India Electronics, said.

Today, India is one of the primary markets for Tizen, with shipments also going to consumers in other markets.

Samsung India on Thursday launched its new My Galaxy application for users of Samsung Galaxy mobile devices before a select audience in Kolkata and Lucknow.

The flagship application from Samsung India is an all-in-one product that brings entertainment, services and Samsung Care on one platform for users.  The new My Galaxy application’s intuitive one-page design not only ensures seamless video, music and gaming experience, but also gives quick access to lifestyle services to users.

The new My Galaxy application’s entertainment hub packs in 42,000+ hours of video content. To top it up, it comes with a free three-month premium subscription for Samsung My Galaxy members.

The music section has a catalogue of more than two million songs, offering three unique features – Galaxy Mocha, Galaxy DJ and Galaxy Mix.

Galaxy Mocha allows users to set their alarm to their favorite song every day. Galaxy DJ enables users to create a playlist as per their mood, while Galaxy Mix offers a specially curated playlist of popular songs for My Galaxy members.

The new My Galaxy application’s gaming hub opens up collaborative functionalities for gamers, enabling them to not only record videos, stream their gameplay and watch others play, but also join and discover new gaming communities.

The new My Galaxy application also integrates key lifestyle services such as recharges, bill payments, movie ticketing, cab booking, flight & hotel bookings, live chat, hyperlocal deals and much more, all within one application.

“At Samsung, we continuously strive to create value for our customers by providing differentiated solutions and services coupled with innovative devices. The new My Galaxy has been developed keeping in mind the Indian consumers and their smart phone usage habits. It is a testimony to our passion for innovation and localization,” Mr. Asim Warsi, Senior Vice President, Samsung India Electronics, said.

Asim Warsi unveiled Samsung My Galaxy App in Lucknow

The new My Galaxy application incorporates significant enhancements over its predecessor, which saw over 10 million downloads on Google Play Store.

The new My Galaxy application was developed by Indian research and development team at Samsung R&D Institute (SRI) at Bangalore. SRI Bangalore is Samsung Electronics’ largest overseas R&D Centre.

Mr. Dipesh Shah, Managing Director, Samsung Research India, Bangalore, said, “The application has been designed to deliver a simple and seamless experience to consumers by a team of our user experience designers, tech experts and great collaboration from our partners. We strongly believe that it would help de-clutter the device, by bringing everything that consumers use their smartphones for, at one place with ease and convenience.”

Users can now do away with multiple applications, which will help them reduce memory constraints on their devices.

Over the next few days, the new My Galaxy application will be unveiled before audiences in Hyderabad, Chandigarh and Ahmedabad too. The new My Galaxy application is available for free via an update on all Samsung Galaxy smartphones in India with android versions which are Jellybean and above. The application can also be downloaded from Google Play Store.