Samsung R&D Institute Bangalore (SRI-B), the Company’s largest R&D centre outside Korea, has won the ‘Impactful GCC Driven Collaboration’ and ‘Excellence in Building Talent of the Future’ Awards at the recently held Nasscom GCC (Global Capability Center) Awards.

These awards recognize Global Capability Centers (GCCs) that are making a significant contribution to Global ER&D operations in terms of portfolio transformation, technical talent development, establishing next-gen centre of excellence and innovation contribution.

The Bengaluru R&D centre has also won two awards – ‘Unlocking Centre Value Award’ and ‘Technical Role Model Award’ – at the Zinnov Awards earlier in September.

SRI-B has undergone a transformation over the last decade. This includes developing breakthrough innovation that has been adopted in global products of Samsung, co-working with start-ups and collaborative projects with academia that have helped boost innovation.

“SRI-B has developed multiple impactful innovations over the last twenty-five years. This success can be attributed to the collaboration with cross-functional teams from within and beyond, converging to draw insights and finding solutions for our consumers. As part of our Powering Digital India vision, we will create breakthrough innovations through our many Centres of Excellence,” said Dipesh Shah, SVP and Managing Director, Samsung R&D Institute Bangalore.

SRI-B has collaborated with vendors for product deployment, including Samsung’s recent tie-up with Vodafone UK for Europe’s first-ever wide-scale commercial deployment of Open RAN, where SRI-B played a key role.

The organization is also deeply connected with the Indian start-up ecosystem for strategic partnerships based on market needs and internal technology requirements, with investments in Swiggy, Magicpin and Railyatri.

“Over the last decade, alongside our in-house innovation, we have built a strong culture of open innovation. Whether it is collaborative work with technology vendors, strategic partnerships with start-ups or research collaboration with universities, Samsung is playing a pivotal role in helping build India’s innovation ecosystem,” said Dr. Aloknath De, Vice President & CTO, Samsung R&D Institute Bangalore.

Earlier this year, SRI-B had also won the ER&D Organization of the Year and the Social Impact Solution of the Year Award at the first edition of the NASSCOM Engineering & Innovation Excellence Awards 2021.

In the last few years, the R&D centre has also established more than twenty research collaborations with universities/research institutes in India and overseas, working in areas of Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Wireless Networks and Multimedia which are its centres of excellence.

The PRISM (Preparing and Inspiring Student Minds) program that SRI-B launched last year has seen positive results, scaling up to a cohort of over 3,000 engineering students and 300 professors, who are working on real world problems with Samsung engineers. This program has helped make students industry-ready while also improving the innovation quotient at Samsung.

IoT has received an enormous amount of attention in recent years, rapidly growing with many smart devices already integrated into consumers’ everyday lives. The number of connected devices in India is expected to reach 2.7 billion by 2020, with Nasscom predicting the economic impact of these devices reaching up to USD 15 billion next year. The market potential of IoT can be enhanced with clear interoperability standards among devices.

“This task force is a big step forward in building awareness about the potential of IoT in India. We will be working closely with government organizations like the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), Telecommunication Engineering Center (TEC) and others in defining IoT standards for India,” said Mr. Sudhanshu Mittal, Director – Industry 4.0 at NASSCOM CoE IoT and member of the OCF India Ecosystem Task Force.

The Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) is a leading open IoT standards development organization. Globally, it is one of the biggest IoT consortiums with 400+ members working towards solving the IoT Standards gap. Samsung being one of the founding members of the OCF, since 2014, has been contributing to the OCF standards development and also adopting OCF specifications in its IoT device ecosystem.

Dr. Aloknath De, Chief Technology Officer, Samsung R&D Institute, Bengaluru said, “Unlocking the true potential of IoT through interoperability will unveil new possibilities for the technology to transform consumers’ lives. As the adoption of IoT increases, Samsung R&D India will continue its mission to provide interoperability for consumers, businesses and developers both in India and around the world.”

In 2017, Samsung R&D Bengaluru started working towards setting up a local chapter of the OCF in India. The vision was to drive the Indian IoT industry through the benefits of standardization and help Indian SMEs generate revenue from IoT services by reducing the lead time for development. The journey began by identifying and reaching out to more than 60+ Indian IoT companies including startups developing products and services for the India market to gauge awareness about IoT standards.

One of the first events where OCF participated in India was the IoT Symposium in Bengaluru in November 2017. Samsung R&D Bengaluru showcased its range of OCF-Certified connected devices interoperating with the each other through the Samsung SmartThings platform.