so here is my experience from today. the card came in a plastic box instead of regular cardboard booklet.
indusind bank mobile app refused to recognize it so i was forced to use phone support to generate pin. took 20 minutes with a lot of help from their customer support guy as i kept on entering wrong values. couldn't even thank that guy because the call disconnected just after pin was registered. he did a wonderful job guiding me as i practically behaved like my dad would on a similar call.
here is the fun part.
samsung pay recognized the card and i was able to pay using it even before pin generation. the card itself failed.
after pin generation, i tried to use it again and it failed. i realized a bit late that it would fail unless i press the button on the card to activate one of the three options. so this is going to be annoying. a post on previous page indicate that the battery in the thing does not last for more than a few months. and the card is useless on retail outlets with a dead battery. and replacement is paid. at least i have the option to continue using it through samsung pay. pay is not perfect though. fails on a lot of machines even today.
so the next goal is to use it at a payment counter and remember to press the card button and get a payment processed through pin instead of nfc. and then check if nfc is functional.
i just wish samsung pay worked on all nfc machines.