Samsung's Solve for Tomorrow programme is increasingly drawing talent from smaller Indian cities, with over half of its top 100 shortlisted teams originating from Tier-2 and Tier-3 locations. This edition marks a significant surge in both applications and participation, reflecting a growing enthusiasm among young students for innovation-driven learning.

Samsung's Solve for Tomorrow programme is increasingly drawing talent from smaller Indian cities, with over half of its top 100 shortlisted teams originating from Tier-2 and Tier-3 locations. This edition marks a significant surge in both applications and participation, reflecting a growing enthusiasm among young students for innovation-driven learning.

Samsung's Solve for Tomorrow programme is increasingly drawing talent from smaller Indian cities, with over half of its top 100 shortlisted teams originating from Tier-2 and Tier-3 locations. This edition marks a significant surge in both applications and participation, reflecting a growing enthusiasm among young students for innovation-driven learning.

More than half of the 100 teams shortlisted for the latest edition of Samsung India's flagship youth innovation programme come from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, signalling that the next wave of student innovators is emerging from beyond India's metropolitan centres.

The fifth edition of Samsung Solve for Tomorrow, announced on Thursday, has also recorded an 85 per cent increase in applications and a 95 per cent rise in participation over last year, reflecting growing interest among school and college students in innovation-led learning.

Open to young people between 14 and 22 years, the programme aims to encourage students to move beyond classroom learning by identifying real-life problems and building technology-driven solutions.

This year's Top 100 teams include participants from districts such as Buxar (Bihar), Kamrup (Assam), Kaithal (Haryana), Sundargarh (Odisha), Narmadapuram (Madhya Pradesh), Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh) and Medchal-Malkajgiri (Telangana), highlighting the growing spread of innovation ecosystems in smaller towns.

The shortlisted students have developed ideas across four themes—AI Living for India, Health & Education, Sports & Tech, and Environmental Sustainability. Several proposals are aimed at improving access to education and inclusion, including an affordable solution that converts any projector into an interactive smart classroom, AI tools to support autistic children and students, and assistive technologies for visually impaired users.

Samsung said the initiative is designed not only as a competition but as a learning platform where students receive hands-on exposure to innovation, entrepreneurship and product development. The Top 100 teams will now be mentored by startup founders, industry experts and academic mentors from FITT-IIT Delhi, helping them transform early-stage ideas into scalable solutions.

The Top 40 teams will undergo a 10-day Innovation Bootcamp and visit Samsung's research and development centres and design facilities in India, giving participants an opportunity to interact with researchers, engineers and product designers.

"Innovation has become India's greatest renewable resource. Every year we see more young people using technology not simply to invent something new, but to solve problems that improve everyday life. Over half of this year's Top 100 teams come from Tier-2 and Tier-3 Indian cities, proving that talent is universal when opportunity is made accessible," said Shubham Mukherjee, Head, Corporate Communications & CSR, Samsung Southwest Asia.

Apart from mentorship, the programme offers financial support to help students build prototypes. The Top 40 teams will collectively receive ₹8 lakh and Samsung laptops, while the Top 20 teams will receive ₹20 lakh and Galaxy Z Flip smartphones. Four winning teams will eventually share an incubation grant of ₹2 crore, along with incubation support from FITT-IIT Delhi to take their innovations towards commercialisation.

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