SRI-Bangalore Completes 25 Years of R&D In India
Samsung R&D Institute, Bangalore (SRI-B), which is celebrating 25 successful years in India, has announced a refreshed R&D strategy by engaging in cutting edge research that will transform communities and make people’s lives better, while also promoting a strong ecosystem of startups and academia.
SRI-B, Samsung’s largest R&D facility outside Korea, was set up in 1996. Over the years, it has grown into an advanced R&D centre for Samsung globally, with excellence in wireless communications, multimedia and image processing, artificial intelligence in vision, voice and text technologies and Internet of Things (IoT).
Over the next five years, SRI-B to explore Multi-Device Intelligence, beyond 5G, Blockchain and Data Science areas even as it continues to create strong differentiation for Samsung through innovations in camera technologies, artificial intelligence and 5G.
SRI-B, which has created a strong culture of filing patents among its engineers over the last decade, will also expand Open Innovation with startups, students and universities to help strengthen the innovation and startup ecosystem in the country.
It will drive this effort by scaling up its industry-academia program PRISM under which it has been working with engineering students and faculty on real-world research and development projects in cutting edge technology areas. So far it has worked with close to 500 students in the country and some of these students have gone on to file patents along with Samsung engineers.
SRI-B engineers have filed over 3,200 patents so far and over the last three years there has been a 4X increase in the number of patents being filed annually. In this period, there has been an increase in Gen Z and Millennial engineers at SRI-B filing patents and around 80% of the patent creators were engineers who filed patents for the first time in their careers.
“It has been an incredible journey since 1996 as SRI-B has been Samsung’s pillar of strength. As we complete yet another milestone, we will focus on breakthrough innovations with our refreshed R&D strategy that will lead to shaping of new global lifestyles inspired from India. We will grow sustainably as we will do our part to uplift the skill base of students especially in the Karnataka region through our unique CSR programs,” said Dipesh Shah, Managing Director, SRI-B.
“Our biggest strength is our people and as we move ahead we will continue to focus on building up the skills of our in-house talent in cutting edge research and development areas and also empower thousands of students enrolled in our industry-academia initiative Samsung PRISM, as part of Samsung’s vision of Powering Digital India,” he said.
Focus on Next Gen Technologies
Going forward, the R&D centre will explore Multi-Device Intelligence, beyond 5G, Blockchain and Data Science areas while on the digital infrastructure side, Virtualization and Containerization will be the key technology focus areas. SRI-B will also focus on intensifying community building programs with services like Samsung Find that enables users to help each other in tracing devices.
Since its set up in 1996, SRI-B has worked on many cutting edge technologies and has had many firsts – 3G networks, the world’s first 4G, 5G networks, voice over LTE – and engineers at the centre have made significant contributions to Samsung Galaxy smartphones and Samsung networks.
Local India-Specific Innovations
SRI-B has been at the centre of developing local India-specific innovations, which has created a differentiation for Samsung smartphones in the Indian market, and these innovations have been loved by consumers.
SRI-B conducts consumer research every year to understand the growing needs of consumers in India, based on which engineers develop innovations that become part of smartphone products for the country. A recent innovation that the centre developed is an On Device Search engine that helps people find their pictures and other content on the smartphones easily using natural language search.
Open Innovation & Building a Strong Patents Culture
SRI-B will scale up the Samsung PRISM program to add more colleges from across the country, to help stimulate the Indian innovation ecosystem, and build capabilities among students that meet industry needs.
These students get to work on projects in cutting edge technology areas such as Artificial Intelligence (including vision tech), Machine Learning, Internet of Things & Connected Devices and 5G networks, to solve real world problems. Each project is taken up by a team of three students and one professor, with a mentor from SRI-B who will guide and train them, and conduct regular reviews. Students are encouraged to publish papers and file patents jointly with SRI-B.
