New Delhi, Nov 27 (IANS): In line with its commitment to hire 2,500 engineers for R&D in India, Samsung India on Wednesday said it has hired more than 1,200 engineers from top institutions like IITs and BITS Pilani this year to create a robust R&D pool for generating innovative 'Make in India' products for both the domestic and global markets.

The South Korean giant hired 1,000 engineers last year from top engineering colleges including IITs, NITs and IIIT, giving a thrust to New-Age domains like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), Machine Learning (ML), biometrics, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Augmented Reality (AR) and networks including 5G.

Samsung India has three R&D centres in the country, in Bengaluru, Noida and Delhi.

"In December 2017, we spoke about our commitment to hire 2,500 engineers in India by 2020. We hired 1,000 engineers in 2018 and have already hired 1,200 plus engineers in 2019. Samsung India is well on track to meet the commitment it made," Sameer Wadhawan, Head, Human Resources (HR), Samsung India, told IANS.

"Overall we have more than 70,000 people working at present and if we talk specifically about R&D centres, we have close to 9,000 people working at our three R&D centres," he added.

The Samsung R&D hiring is taking place at top engineering colleges like all the major IITs, including the newly-opened IIT Tirupati.

"We have also been hiring talent from NITs, BITS Pilani, Delhi Institute of Technology, Manipal Institute of Technology and IIITs," he added.

Samsung has one of the largest concentrations of R&D engineers in India outside of its South Korea headquarters.

"It helps us fuel the innovation from India for the domestic market as well as global territories," said Wadhawan.

He stressed that the company will hire people from streams like computer science, electronics and communication, electrical engineers, mathematics and computing and Information and technology.

From over 1,200 plus people hired this year, over 340 joined the company through pre-placement offers (PPOs).

According to Wadhawan, over 37 per cent of the population in India is represented by millennials and the young workforce will further drive innovation.

"We value their potential and help them identify and redefine their abilities. We believe in nurturing the talent. The focus is on the overall well-being and development of the young workforce," he said.

In July, Samsung India told IANS that after generating 2,000 new jobs in the past one year in the country, the south Korean giant would hire more talent across verticals throughout the year as it "continuously realigns resources" as per business priorities.

Reacting to media report that said Samsung is slashing 1,000 jobs in India in the face of stiff competition from Chinese companies, the South Korean tech giant had said: "As we contribute to job creation, we continuously realign resources as per business priorities to make our business more robust and efficient for long-term success".

Samsung stressed that its business in India continues to grow and expand.

"We have demonstrated our commitment by building the world's largest mobile factory in Noida, investing in local R&D and we are exploring new businesses such as 5G Network, among others," said the company.