26 year-old Pavithra Vancheeswaran is over joyed. Not only has she completed her M. Tech from the Indian Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT-B) but has also won the prestigious ‘Sir M. Visvesvaraya Scholarship Award’ for scoring the highest CGPA across all courses. This is no small feat considering Pavithra is a full-time employee of Samsung R&D Institute India, Bangalore (SRI-B), Samsung’s biggest research centre outside Korea and the M. Tech course was done alongside pressures of work.

She, and another colleague Yogesh Kochar, who also won the award, competed against 163 M. Tech. students, most of them doing the course full-time.

Pavithra and Yogesh are part of a group of 28 engineers from SRI-B who have completed their M. Tech. degrees from IIIT-B as part of the R&D centre’s continuous learning initiative, helping upskill its employees.

“Balancing work, studies and other commitments is a tight rope to walk, and I wouldn’t have been able to do this without support from my team and my family,” says Pavithra, who joined Samsung in 2016 as a campus fresher and is now part of the Internet of Things team.

SRI-B employs thousands of young engineers who work on cutting edge technology in diverse areas such as AI, machine learning, IoT, natural language processing, biometrics and camera tech.

Many engineers at SRI-B, like Pavithra, are straight out of engineering college and to help them with an upward learning curve, SRI-B has tied up with IIIT-B for an M. Tech. program for employees with specialisation in Computer Science in 2014. Since then, 172 employees have completed the program.

Employees have to go through a rigorous entrance examination and an internal selection process to get a seat in the coveted M.Tech. program.

Yogesh Kochar from the Network team says the last three years have been a challenge for him but this program has added tremendous value to him as a professional. “Going back to academics has given me a fresh perspective and helped me take my work to the next level. I can already feel the difference,” he says.

Professors from IIIT-B conduct classes for the program at the SRI-B office in Bengaluru. Over the last year and half, though, these classes have shifted online.

“At Samsung India, we strongly believe in continuous learning. We nurture the talent of our people and enhance their research acumen. The collaboration with premier institutes such as IISC, IIT-M and IIIT-B were initiated to upskill our engineers on deep technology domains,” says Dr. Aloknath De, Vice President & CTO , SRI-B.

“It is fascinating to see our veterans and young millennials study together while working full time. Over the last few years, we have seen an upward slope in the learning curve, which is also reflected in the higher number of research publications and patents filings” he adds.

SRI-B has witnessed a four times increase in patent filing over the last four years, especially in areas such as 5G, AI and IoT.

Starting this year, SRI-B has collaborated with two premiere Indian institutes –Indian Institute of Technology – Madras (IIT-M) – for part-time and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) for full time nonresidential course. SRI-B plans to sponsor higher education for 30 employees with IISc in 2021. The M. Tech programs will focus on specialization in Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Business Analytics, ECE and Signal Processing.

These employees go through a rigorous entrance examination and an internal selection process to get a seat for the M.Tech. program.

This is the third batch of SRI-B employees who have earned their master’s degree from this institute, after SRI-B partnered with IIIT-B for imparting M.Tech. with specialisation in Computer Science for its employees. This program is part of the R&D Centre’s continuous learning initiative, which helps in fulfilling the aspirations of many of its employees.

“Our employees have always displayed a strong desire to enhance their technical skills and we are delighted to play such an important role in helping them fulfill their M.Tech aspirations. We aim to continue offering our people more avenues to build their technical skills,” said Dr. Aloknath De, Chief Technology Officer, SRI-B.

SRI-B hires many engineers from top engineering colleges across the country and provides them the opportunity to work on cutting edge technology in areas such as AI, machine learning, IoT, natural language processing, biometrics and camera tech. In order to help these employees gain more skills to shape their career, SRI-B runs many training programs that are aimed at both young professionals as well as experienced personnel.

SRI-B was set up in 1996, a year after Samsung entered the Indian market, and has worked on several India centric innovations that are a part of Samsung products today. Many global innovations in Samsung’s flagship smartphones have also been developed in the R&D centre.

Thirty one employees from Samsung’s global headquarters in Korea and five university students from Korea have been mentoring 20 shortlisted startups remotely for the last two months as part of the Samsung Employee Volunteer Program.

Over the last one week, between August 6 and 10, they were huddled with the startups at a five-day bootcamp at the IIIT-B campus to better understand the hurdles faced by the startups in developing their products and services.

The startups and their mentors showcased their business models to several Venture Capital firms that were present at IIIT-B on August 9. On August 10, the startups gave individual pitch presentations to a panel comprising Dr. Aloknath De, Chief Technology Officer, Samsung R&D Institute, Bangalore, Mr. DV Jagadish, CEO, Outreach at IIIT-B and representatives of two venture funds.

Hexpressions, which offers affordable, ready to assemble homes made out of Composite Paper Honeycomb panels, was the winner of the Global Startup Acceleration Program award and was given a prize of INR 200,000. The first runners up Ziroh Labs that works in the area of privacy engineering and runtime encryption of data was given a prize of INR 150,000 while the second runners up Olly Credit, with a business model around mobile first micro credit cards for millennials was given a prize of INR 100,000.

Social enterprise Geriatric Care Network, which provides preventive and wellness focused healthcare solutions for the elderly, and BrownPacket, a mobile app for hyperlocal medicines and wellness products delivery, won the Best Improvement Award for showing the most improvement through the two month mentoring process.

Geriatric Care Network also won the Best Potential Award, which was also given to Mr. Susurla VS Suresh of Startoon Labs, which offers a solution that assists physiotherapists to accurately measure recovery of mobility and muscle strength of patients undergoing physiotherapy.

The Best Social Impact Award was given to Avidia Labs that offers immersive learning experiences for schools using augmented reality and virtual reality.

“At Samsung we strive to encourage young minds and nurture the spirit of innovation. With the Global Startup Acceleration Program, our experts and engineers from different domains are volunteering to support the sustainable growth of local entrepreneurs in the early stage,” said Dr. Aloknath De, Chief Technology Officer, Samsung R&D Institute, Bangalore.

Shilpi Dua, co-founder of Hexpressions, which was the winner, said this was a very different program compared to many others they have attended over the years.

“We are in the construction space. Our mentors are entrenched in technology. This was a great mix. We got a very different perspective from them about our business. They have suggested a few technology solutions based on IoT and automation that we can incorporate in our business and we will definitely take these forward,” she said.

Ziroh Labs, which was the first runners up, worked with a bunch of four mentors, who, in the words of CEO Bhaskar Mehdi, gave the startup a larger perspective on the world of data security.

“Five working days are definitely not enough but even these five days added value to us. We got a range of advice, from corporate strategy to interesting use-cases from our mentors,” said Mehdi.

For instance Mehdi talks about one of the mentors Kyuwon Kim, a software engineer at Samsung in Korea who works of machine learning and security. “Since he is from the security field, he could give us some interesting use-cases on where our technology could be used,” he said.

The entrepreneurs were pumped by the buzz and energy in the room during the five-day bootcamp.

Kim, who advised Ziroh Labs, says we have become friends over these days and will stay connected with them.

Since 2010, about 1,500 employees of Samsung have joined this program in 43 countries. This year, Samsung is focused on supporting local entrepreneurs and helping them build their businesses for a sustainable impact on society.

This program is being held globally in Indonesia, Malaysia, India, South Africa between July and September with 80 selected startups. Among winners in four countries, five startup will be invited to Samsung headquarters in Korea.

In India, IIIT- B invited applications from startups for the Global Startup Acceleration Program starting May. Of the applications that were received, Samsung Electronics and IIIT-B shortlisted 20 startups based on the problems that they were trying to solve, their business model, motivation levels of participants and their passion towards their venture, amongst other factors. Based on the domain of the startups, mentoring teams were allocated to address their business problems.

As part of its corporate social responsibility, Samsung R&D Institute, Bangalore (SRI-B) signed a MoU with IIIT-B under which three startups will get extended support from the local incubation center at IIIT-B for the next 24 months.

“The kind of support a startup receives in its initial phase can define its success. As a company that strongly believes in co-prosperity as one of our core values, we are proud to partner with a prestigious institution such as IIIT-B to provide best infrastructure and mentorship to early-stage startups, helping grow the local startup ecosystem,” said Mr. Dipesh Shah, Managing Director, Samsung R&D Institute, Bangalore.

Gaurav Kumar Jain (L) at the convocation ceremony

Gaurav Kumar Jain notched up 3.91 CGPA in his M.Tech. program this year, enough to help him win the gold medal at International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Bangalore’s batch of 2017. It’s no ordinary achievement, considering Gaurav is also a full-time employee of Samsung R&D Institute India, Bangalore (SRI-B), Samsung’s biggest research centre outside Korea.

Gaurav credited his success to the interesting work he does at SRI-B, which involves machine learning and data analytics, and the support of colleagues at workplace.

“This wouldn’t have been possible if I hadn’t got proactive support from the team at work and from my seniors. The last three years were a challenge but I would love relive each of those days for the sheer value they have added to my career,” said the 37-year-old whose M.Tech. Thesis was on Deep Learning.

Gaurav is part of the first batch (2014-17) of SRI-B students that successfully completed M.Tech. from IIIT-Bangalore. SRI-B has an agreement with IIIT-Bangalore for imparting M.Tech. with specialisation in Computer Science for its employees.

SRI-B employs thousands of young engineers who work on cutting edge technology in diverse areas. Many engineers at SRI-B are straight out of college. To help upskill these employees, SRI-B tied up with IIIT-B for an M.Tech. program in 2014. Employees have to go through a rigorous entrance examination and an internal selection process to get a seat for the M.Tech. program.

“We have a strong vision to transform SRI-B into an advanced R&D centre by scaling up our talent capabilities and also infrastructure. The M.Tech. program helps reskill our talent base and make them future-ready. It also helps fulfill the aspirations of employees. The response to the M.Tech. program has been excellent,” said Sanjeev Prasad, Vice President, HR at Samsung R&D Institute India, Bangalore.

SRI-B has launched several other initiatives to engage young minds and nurture entrepreneurship skills among employees.

“We have built an India Research Network of different faculties across institutes. Every year we invite six to seven professors to talk on topics such as data security and IoT. We also employ some Research Fellows. We have also started a sabbatical program for professors in summer. These professors spend some time with us, consult our projects and deliver solutions,” said Dr. Aloknath De, Chief Technology Officer, SRI-B.

SRI-B was set up in 1996, a year after Samsung entered the Indian market, and has worked on several India centric innovations that are a part of Samsung products today. Many global innovations in Samsung’s flagship smartphones have also been developed in the R&D centre.