Digital technology leader Samsung India Electronics Pvt Ltd on Thursday announced to offer annual scholarships to five meritorious students of the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A), as part of industry-academia partnership and engagement. An MoU was signed by Mr J. S. Shin, CEO and President, Samsung South West Asia, and Dr Samir Barua, Director, IIM-A in this regard here.
Samsung Scholarship Program
Under the Samsung Scholarship Program, five management students will be selected on the basis of their first year's score, leadership skills and conceptual and inter-personal skills. The scholarship will cover two-thirds of tuition fees of the student and fund his second year's education.
They will get an opportunity to engage and interact with senior management at Samsung to facilitate better understanding and greater knowledge-sharing with the industry. Through this exposure in summer internship in the company, they would have an edge in placement. Dr Barua said although IIM-A has had similar arrangements with other companies, they were all in the service sector.
Samsung is the first company from manufacturing sector to offer such a scholarship. This would motivate and encourage students to join manufacturing sector as well.
This may become a trend-setter and other companies may also come forward to sponsor candidates, he added. Recent trends show that about two-thirds of students in management institutes come from engineering and technology streams.
Mr Shin said India is emerging as a manufacturing and R&D hub for Samsung and other companies.
The company may consider increasing the number of scholarship at the IIM-A and expand it further to other premier institutes as well.