As part of that philosophy, five years ago, several employees of Samsung got an opportunity to engage with less privileged students at government schools in rural India, and most of them were taken by surprise that the biggest reason for these children to attend school was to get free mid-day meals provided to these schools through a government programme. Most students did not have basic necessities such as notebooks and stationery.

That’s when employees from Samsung Research Institute – Bengaluru (SRI-B) resolved to begin a donation drive to bring focus back on education and help curb the drop-out rate among students.

This week, our employee volunteers reached out to government schools in six Talukas of Kolar and Ramnagar districts of Karnataka and distributed 550,000 notebooks to 100,000 students in 2,100 government schools.

As the little girls and boys received their new set of notebooks and stationery, the glee on their faces was palpable. The minute they got their hands on their prized possessions, they couldn’t stop writing their names on them. Mr J Manjunath, the District Collector of Kolar, Samsung executives and other officials participated in the drive along with Samsung employees. The students also made a solemn promise to study to the best of their potential.

Samsung has always shared a strong relationship with the state of Karnataka. Bengaluru is home to SRI-B, Samsung’s largest research and development centre outside South Korea, and Samsung Opera House, the world’s largest mobile experience centre. Samsung also recently installed the world’s largest Onyx Cinema LED screen at the city’s Swagath Cinema theatre.

In the fifth edition of the notebook donation drive for around one lakh students studying at government schools, volunteers from SRI-B reached out to schools in six Talukas of Kolar district (Kolar, Malur, KGF, Mulbagal, Bangarpet and Srinivaspura) and one Taluka of  Ramanagar district (Magadi) to distribute notebooks and stationery items.

School Boys in Taluka of Kolar district  show their new notebooks.

The notebook donation drive was conceptualized five years ago when Samsung employees, on a field visit, interacted with students of different government schools to understand their challenges and more importantly, the reason for attending school. A majority of students said they come to school only for mid-day meals. They also mentioned that they lacked necessities like notebooks and stationary items. Engineers at SRI-B formed a volunteer group and along with the CSR team has been conducting donation drives, bringing the focus back to education and helping arrest school drop-out rates.

“We urge more corporates to come forward and participate in the development process of our region. These students are our future and I appreciate Samsung’s efforts towards the development of rural areas of Kolar. We seek continued support to brighten up the lives of these children,” said Shri Manjunath, District Collector, Kolar.

School Girls in Taluka of Kolar district show their new notebooks.

“Samsung has undertaken conscious efforts towards the development of young minds in this region. The continued collaboration with Karnataka government is a testimony of our commitment and we feel deeply satisfied to see our young talented engineers participate with enthusiasm. While we continue to make the lives of our consumers better with our innovations, we will also focus on contributing to the development of our country with sustainable initiatives,” said Dipesh Shah, Managing Director, Samsung R&D Institute – Bangalore.

Since 2015, members of the volunteer group, ‘SEVA’ and the CSR team at SRI-B have contributed over 850,000 notebooks to over 70,000 school students across 1,200 government schools. With the latest drive, they would have contributed over 1,400,000 notebooks. The team has also initiated the construction of a new school building in Kolar district and has installed water filters in 85 schools in the district.

Samsung has had a strong relationship with Karnataka. The state is home to Samsung’s largest R&D centre outside Korea, the world’s largest mobile experience centre, the Samsung Opera House and the recently launched cinema LED screen at Swagath Cinema, Bangalore.

Being a leader in innovation, Samsung closely works with a host of startups committed towards building innovative and purposeful technologies across the globe and in India. The company’s investment arm has decided to make its investments in a system apps company OSLabs (Indus OS), speech technology startup Gnani.ai, IoT solutions provider Silvan Innovation Labs and an early stage computer vision startup.

OSLabs has developed a curated app store, Indus App Bazaar, which has a collection of over 400,000 mobile apps in multiple Indian languages. Bangalore-based Gnani.ai works in the space of automatic speech recognition and natural language processing in Indic languages for building voice assistants and for speech analytics. Speech recognition is today an important part of Human to Machine interactions and there is a rising need for automated speech recognition (ASR) in the vernacular languages space.

On the other hand, Silvan Innovation Labs is a leader in IoT solutions for homes and enterprises and has pioneered solutions for smart spaces. The startup provides solutions that address safety, security, comfort, convenience and energy management.

“The Indian startup ecosystem has matured over the last few years with early stage companies working on top of the line technology and services, especially in areas like Artificial Intelligence, IoT, cloud and other emerging technology solutions as well as services. Samsung is committed to work with and invest in promising Indian startups. This will be a win-win for both as it will help startups scale their solutions through this deep engagement while we get an opportunity to enrich our offerings to our consumers,” said Dr. Aloknath De, Corporate Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Samsung R&D Institute Bengaluru.

The four investments by SVIC in Indian startups are strategic in nature. Samsung had recently partnered with OS Labs to launch the new Galaxy Store, powered by Indus App Bazaar, which brings app discovery and download experience to consumers in 12 local Indian languages in addition to English and offers personalized app recommendations without mandatory sign in. Similarly, Samsung’s investment in Gnani’s ASR engine has the potential to power Samsung’s Bixby vernacular service in the future. With an installed base of over 6,000 homes and 12 live communities, Silvan’s products and IoT platform will add value to Samsung’s efforts to have all its products IoT ready by 2020.

“It is a moment of great pride for us, to have Samsung Venture, the VC arm of the biggest smartphone brand in the world, show faith and invest in our company. As we look to offer the Indus experience to wider audiences, these funds will help us reach our goal of empowering 100 million Indian users with a content and commerce platform in the language of their choice, thus ensuring a truly inclusive digital growth and an enriched user experience for everyone,” said Rakesh Deshmukh, Co-founder, CEO, OSLabs.

“We would like to thank Samsung Ventures for reposing confidence in our capabilities. This investment is a reaffirmation of our expertise in speech recognition technologies. We stay committed to our goal to continue being the leading speech recognition engine in Indic languages for voice assistant,  call automation and speech analytics applications for multiple customers,” said Ganesh Gopalan, Founder and CEO, Gnani.ai.

“IoT is a big and complex market and strategic partnerships are needed for companies to leverage each other’s strengths to address market needs. Towards that, we are extremely pleased to partner with Samsung Venture, given their deep understanding and reach of various markets,” said Avinash K Gautam, CEO, Silvan Innovation Labs.

SVIC is actively investing in future-oriented businesses based on new and innovative technologies that are expected to serve as new growth engines. It was established to promote promising companies engaging in the development of new technologies.As of March 2019, SVIC has over USD 2.2 billion in assets under management.

Samsung Electronics is committed to innovating today with its technology to create a better tomorrow based on a deep understanding of what people need and want. In 2018, Samsung invested over USD 15 billion on R&D through its 36 R&D centres globally and also announced it will invest USD 22 billion over the next three years in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), 5G, automotive electronics components and biopharmaceuticals that will drive its future growth.

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.

Employees of Samsung Research & Development Institute – Bangalore (SRI-B) visited 1,200 government schools across Karnataka over three days to donate notebooks and pens to 70,000 students. This is SRI-B’s largest notebook donation drive in collaboration with the Government of Karnataka.

As part of the initiative, members of the SEVA team at SRI-B, which is committed towards community related voluntary programs, distributed close to 5 lakh notebooks and 88,000 pens to students in the state.

The donation drive was held in three phases and saw volunteers from SRI-B reaching out to schools in Kolar, Malur, KGF, Mulbagal, Bangarpet, Srinivaspura and Devanahalli districts of the state.

“At Samsung, education is a cause that is close to our heart. We are committed to helping students across the state learn and fulfill their dreams. With notebooks being a basic necessity for students, we would like to empower the children of rural India through such drives,” said Mr. Dipesh Shah, Managing Director, Samsung R&D Institute, Bengaluru.

SRI-B came forward to help these students as it was observed that these students did not have sufficient number of notebooks and other essential items required for the academic education. SRI-B took the initiative of distributing study materials to keep the students engaged and improve their education outcomes.

Last year, this drive had brought smiles on faces of over 30,000 students, who had received notebooks, dictionaries, stationery kits and other essential items under this initiative. On special request of government officials for greater support, SRI-B fulfilled its promise this year by directing more efforts towards the uplift of student fraternity and empowering rural India.

The program has brought about a huge difference as the number of students who drop out of school, especially girls, has dropped considerably in the schools where these study materials were distributed.

Camera phones have changed the notion of traditional photography, enabling millions around the world to capture their favourite moments. What’s also become a rage is how quickly people share captured moments on social media.

Take the case of India, which has one of the highest number of WhatsApp and Facebook users in the world. Taking pictures and sharing them on social network is among the most used feature in smartphones.

The emergence of camera as a key buying factor and the growing trend of sharing pictures on social media led Samsung R&D Institute, Bangalore (SRI-B) to develop a Social Camera for the millennials. SRI-B is Samsung’s biggest R&D centre outside Korea.

“During interactions with millennials, it was observed that instant sharing and maximizing social currency is the basic need of youngsters today. Once captured image goes to gallery, it becomes a dead moment and they feel they are behind the race in social world,” Girish Kulkarni, Director, SRI- Bangalore said.

Samsung’s Social Camera allows users to instantly share, edit and discover content. Users can pin their favourite contacts and social media within the camera and share their moments as they click. Instant editing helps consumers create engaging social media-ready content on-the-go by applying live filters or live stickers and share it instantly with social media apps.

This reduces dependency on third party image editing apps. The instant discovery feature adds a whole new dimension through the augmented reality camera that allows users to discover their surroundings for popular photography spots, restaurants and shopping areas.

The development of Social Camera involved a lot of collaboration among Samsung India’s teams. SRI-Bangalore developed Social Share, Live Filters, Live Stickers within the smartphone camera, while SRI-Noida pitched in by developing the social footprint – Geo-Like and augmented reality differentiation.

The concept of pinning contacts and social networks onto the camera itself for instant sharing, one of UX team’s global patents, introduces urgency of sharing captures from camera like never before. The need for urgency also reduces the gap between camera and gallery in the user’s mind. What the consumers capture with the camera is more for quick sharing than keeping them stored. The concept of quick discovery addresses the insight that our users like what they capture, and want this liking to be known, appreciated and discovered by others.

The team at SRI-B that developed the Social Camera feature for the Indian market

“As a team, we were successful in delivering a compelling Social Camera proposition for Galaxy J7 Max & Galaxy J7 Pro. We hope Indian consumers will love Social Camera immensely. We are already planning to scale this concept to international markets and subsequently deploy it for Samsung Flagship Smartphones,” Dr. Balvinder Singh, Vice President, SRI-Bangalore said.

Samsung’s multimedia technology team at Bangalore has consistently delivered world’s first and world’s best solutions for camera and innovative multimedia features for Samsung’s flagship Galaxy smartphone series. These solutions have been developed keeping in mind the requirements of Indian consumers.

The Indian R&D team has earlier contributed to the development of Motion Panorama feature in the Galaxy S7 camera that enables consumers to capture live events in great detail. The Spotlight Selfie feature, which provides consumers with a studio-like environment with virtual light source, was also developed in India.

SRI-B has also contributed 10-12 key camera modes (front & rear) in the award winning Samsung Galaxy S8. Some of the key multimedia features in the smartphone include live media streaming and media authoring in Gallery with Automatic Story creation, Video Highlights and Image editing functions.

Volunteers from Samsung R&D Institute, Bengaluru with students

Samsung India has collaborated with the Karnataka government to donate notebooks and pens to students in 450 government schools across Bengaluru, Kolar and Mulbaghal districts in the state.

A team of over 120 volunteers from Samsung R&D Institute, Bengaluru visited these schools and distributed 160,000 notebooks and 38,500 pens to over 30,000 students in two days.

“As a market leader, Samsung caters to the needs of its consumers with meaningful innovations and quality products, and also pledges to contribute to the needs of the society to create a better life for people,” said Mr. Dipesh Shah, Managing Director, Samsung R&D Institute, Bengaluru.

“The notebook donation drive, through which we have been able to reach out to over 30,000 students in Karnataka, is a small step in that direction,” he said.

Earlier this year, Samsung donated stationery items such as dictionaries, exam pads, geometry boxes, bags and stationery pouches to around 500 schools in Karnataka.

Another important milestone was the agreement with Government of Karnataka to help the state efficiently manage its public healthcare facilities. As part of the agreement, Samsung Research & Development Institute, Bangalore (SRI-B) provided over 1,000 Samsung Tab IRIS devices to the Department of Health, Government of Karnataka. Samsung Tab IRIS, the first commercial tablet to be approved by UIDAI for Aadhaar and KYC verification, is enabling Public Health Centers (PHC) in the state to build their database in a digital format.

Samsung began its journey in India in 1995, and in over two decades, it has grown into one of the country’s biggest consumer product companies, with 2 manufacturing plants, 5 R&D centres, 1 design centre, 1.5 lakh retail outlets and over 70,000 employees. Samsung is also India’s Most Trusted Brand and is pioneering local manufacturing through its ‘Make for India’ initiative.

Samsung India Citizenship Initiatives

At Samsung, our aim is to harness the Company’s legacy of innovation to positively transform communities and create a better life for people through different initiatives.

Samsung Smart Class, the Company’s flagship citizen program in India, promotes digital education among underprivileged students, especially in rural India. This initiative aims to bridge the digital gap between rural and urban India and provide equal opportunities for quality education to children from all backgrounds. Since 2013, over 470 Samsung Smart Class have been set up at Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya schools across the length and breadth of India benefitting over 2.5 lakh students. In addition, over 8,000 teachers have been trained on how to use interactive technology to teach.

The Company has also established Samsung Technical Schools in partnership with the Ministry of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSME), Government of India and ITIs in the states of Bihar, West Bengal, Kerala, Rajasthan and Delhi, to address the need for talented manpower with practical know-how and relevant industry experience. Students at the 22 Samsung Technical Schools also benefit from exposure to Samsung manufacturing facilities and authorized service centers. Till date, Samsung Technical Schools have provided technical training for job opportunities to over 2,000 youth.

One of the Company’s key citizenship initiatives is the Samsung Smart Healthcare program that has been designed to support the Government’s efforts to provide the best of healthcare to millions of citizens especially from the economically weaker sections. Through this program, Samsung provides government hospitals its innovative healthcare equipment such as ultrasound, digital radiology and accessories, with the aim to make affordable healthcare accessible to the large number of patients at select Government hospitals in Chennai, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Gurugram and Delhi.

(L to R): Prof. Debabrata Das, Dean Academic and R&D, IITB, Dr. Aloknath De, Corporate VP & CTO, Samsung R&D Institute, India – Bangalore and S. Rajagopalan, Professor, IIIT-Bangalore

Samsung Research & Development Institute, Bangalore (SRI-B) has renewed its partnership with International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Bangalore for imparting M.Tech course with specialization in Computer Science to SRI-B employees.

The Memorandum of Understanding for renewing the agreement till January 2020 was signed by Prof. Debabrata Das, Dean Academic and R&D, IIIT Bangalore and Dr. Aloknath De, Corporate Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of SRI-B.

Ninety employees from SRI-B were selected for this program, with the first batch successfully completing the program this year. In July 2017, convocation for the first batch will take place at IIIT-B.

“Delighted to see how more than 90 of our brilliant employees’ aspirations to undergo M.Tech program is getting realized over last three years through this initiative with IIIT-B. Professors’ sincere engagement and employees’ excellent performance have reiterated organization’s belief of such program’s innate value,” Dr. Aloknath De, said.

SRI-B is the largest overseas research and development centre of Samsung Electronics. Founded in 1996, SRI-B has grown to be a significant contributor to the cutting edge products and services of Samsung. SRI-B is a key player in the breakthrough innovation and success story of Samsung Electronics.

SRI-B engineers conceptualize and commercialize novel features, designs, products and services that differentiate Samsung as a market leader and deliver world-class products.

Samsung’s emphasis on innovation and research & development is essential to its business. In order to inculcate a culture of global as well as local innovation, Samsung has a number of R&D centres strategically spread across the globe.

India is among the hotspots of Samsung’s innovation strategy. As a result of that, there are as many as three R&D centres in India: Samsung Research Institutes in Bangalore, Delhi, and Noida.