MRSI Managing Committee 2022-2024 Nominations

Sandeep is a Business leader who hails from a Strategic Planning and Advisory background with over 25 years of international experience. He is a ‘disruptive’ thinker and brings value through transformational solutions to the fore. His area of expertise has been around integrating digital ecosystems towards driving excellence in Customer Engagement.
Prior to joining Datamatics, he has worked with organizations such as Mahindra & Mahindra, Times of India, Kantar and Nielsen. In addition, Sandeep has been instrumental in the incubation of three business lines in Datamatics, in the areas of Research & Analytics, Customer Management Solutions and Consulting & Advisory Practice. His particular expertise lies in enhancing Customer Experience through deployment of Process Re-Engineering and digital transformation. His particular certifications in Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and Gamification reflect his interests and passion.
Sandeep Arora is a key influencer in the global consumer insights and analytics community. He is currently the elected President of the leading association of consumer research and insights professionals in India, MRSI (www.mrsi.co.in). He regularly presents thought-leadership papers in global forums. He is also a visiting faculty to a few leading management schools in India and has recently joined as a member of the Governing Board of Centre for Marketing in Emerging Economies (CMEE) at IIM Lucknow.

Currently I am responsible for:

• Media Public Relations
• • Consumer Insights
• • Data and Analytics
• • Consumer Activation
• • Customer Care & Online reputation
• • Sales Operations
• • Direct to Consumer
• • Brand Digital Assets
• • First Party Data
• • Digital first content

Three words that best describe me:

• Media Public Relations
• • Passionate
• • Always a student
• • Hunter of Innovation

My Areas of Interest:Offbeat Travelling and Wildlife Photography

I am based out of Bangalore , India. I joined ITC in 2007 as Head of Consumer Insights and over the last 15 years I have been lucky to be a part of the organization which grew ten folds to 1.5 Billion Dollar Business. I was instrumental into our forays into multiple food and beverage categories like Snacks, Juices, Chocolates, Noodles and Coffee. Understanding consumers and their needs has always excited me and the quest has hence been to innovate systems and processes to keep ITC ahead of the curve and create winning solutions for the business. As data and analytics became more important in the area of decision making, I got the opportunity to spread my sphere of contribution. Today we have been able to go beyond the traditional analytical process to adapting the new age practice of machine learning and using artificial intelligence to predict outcomes with higher degree of surety. Having set the practice of analytics, we focused to develop capabilities in the field of Digital Media and utilization of unstructured data. This area is yet to mature, however the dynamism and the new ness of the space creates an excitement each day. As the CDMO, I get the opportunity to be at the cusp of strategy, creative thinking, build innovative offers and create capabilities in the organization to be future ready. I feel like being a student 20 years back and even now. Hope to continue in the quest of knowing the new and implementing the best.

A seasoned professional in KPO/Analytics, Online Market Research and Data Collection Industry, Arindam has 15+ years of experience working with data in some of the leading ResTech companies in the world.
Arindam has hands-on experience in driving sales, customer engagement and customer retention across APAC and North America. Arindam has been instrumental in driving revenue growth, retaining and upscaling existing customer base and growing and managing internal teams across multiple organizations with primary focus in the APAC and North American markets.
Arindam is a customer success and growth maven, adept at business development, technology and SaaS adoption and has traveled extensively across North America, Europe and APAC regions attending and speaking in conferences and networking events and interacting with cross functional global teams.

Rajesh Chakrabarti started his career at Buena Vista Television India, where he led all Internet Initiatives of the group and was also part of the team that launched FTV in India and the 1st Fbar in India.
Post a 4 year stint with BVTI, RC (as he is better known as) moved to the Radio Division of News Corp in India known as Radio City. Rajesh and him team quadrupled revenue for the station in a short time and was also responsible for content driven revenue at the FM station. UTV (now Disney India) was his next destination where he headed the revenue stream, merchandising and licensing for Hungama TV. Rajesh was responsible for getting shinshan to India which elevated Hungama to the No. 1 kids channel status in just 9 months. Getting to no. 1 position elicited Disney’s interest in a buy out and the rest is history. In 2006 RC moved to DCB BANK as Head of Marketing and Product Research and was instrumental in rebranding the bank. RC played a stellar role in DCB’s IPO which was a resounding success. He launched a fair number of asset based products (in a predominantly Liability led bank and was part of the core team to create a profitable bank after years of losses. In 2008 RC was picked up by Reliance Capital. He started off as Head marketing and in his 7 year stint RC was handling multiple portfolios as CMO, Chief Innovation officer, Business Head Gold loans and Agricultural Loans as well as heading the Economic Intelligence unit. With a Masters in economics RC led the economic intelligence wing at RCAP and guided the organizations strategy process and SME cluster creation. In 2018, RC joined Nielsen as head of Consumer Insights for the EV part of the business. He led Auto, BFSI, Telecom, PEIT and Media (CI). AT Nielsen RC was responsible for growing the overall business as well as making it a profitable one. He also introduced multiple new brands into the Nielsen fold. In May 2021, RC joined Nielsen Media as head of Customized Research (Qual and Quant) and Media Analytics. He is also leading Nielsen’s industry engagement with MRSI and IAS. RC is also the CBP for BARC.

Parijat Chakraborty has more than 27 years of rich experience in Market and Social Research Industry.  In his current role, he leads two major Service Lines of Ipsos in India, Public Affairs and Corporate Reputation. Parijat has diverse experience in different walks of market and social research. In the past, he has successfully managed various research divisions like Customer Experience, Automotive, Technology, Telecom, B2B Consulting and Consumer Research. Prior to joining Ipsos, he has contributed to the growth of companies like TNS, IDC, NFO-MBL and ORG-Marg. In his career, Parijat has led many complex projects addressing multi-pronged issues of the industry and society. He has deep knowledge of cross-sector issues, on both macro and micro levels. Parijat is an active contributor to several initiatives of MRSI i.e. The Community Program, Golden Key Award, Government Relationship Program etc. He is an engineer from Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (erstwhile Bengal Engineering college, Shibpur, Howrah), a CEE alumnus of ISB (Hyderabad) and an EEP alumnus of Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad). He is also a certified Lead Auditor for ISO 20252 & 9001 and implemented ISO Standards from scratch. He is also a certified Six-Sigma professional with distinction. Parijat is a regular speaker in different events and frequently quoted in media

• Ranco has over 29 years of experience in Business Development and Operations across sectors like Consumer Products,Financial Services and Telecom. He has worked in companies like Asian Paints,Godrej-GE,Airtel and Nokia. He headed the Indian operations of ValueAccess -a Hongkong based Gift Cards and Loyalty Solutions Service Provider.
• He played key roles in launching Airtel in Haryana and Punjab. He headed North and East India for Nokia Mobile Payment Services.
• He has also had a stint as a business owner in ed-tech services for 4 years.
• In Datawise, Ranco has worked on impact assessment projects for Unicef,GIZ,NSDC amongst others.
• He has completed his B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from NIT,Rourkela and PGDM from IIM, Ahmedabad.

A business leader with over 20 years of experience, Dixit has been instrumental in successfully managing business verticals, consumer research, sales strategy, technology solutions, and team building in established and new (start-ups) market research agencies.
At Toluna, he spearheads the growth strategy for India, including business expansion across corporate clients and MR agencies. He is actively working with his enthusiastic team to drive the penetration of online and DIY research across client types in India. Before Toluna, he was Vice President at Karvy Insights and was responsible for scaling up the client portfolio across different sectors and accountable for research programs and delivery. Before Karvy Insights, he worked at Kantar (IMRB International) for ten years. The tenure included four years with Probe Qualitative Research (PQR) and then with the Retail and Media research practice in the quantitative unit. He successfully led the expansion of custom research practice in the retail division. He was also selected for three weeks of training in shoppers' research at Envirosell, the USA, in 2012. At the beginning of his career, Dixit had worked with a leading business publication and led the B2B research function there. He has regularly contributed to TV panel debates on the India Today news channel about public opinion (Political) surveys. He has also written articles for Outlook Magazine, Indian Research and Insights Industry report 2021,  and The Economic Times on exciting research and marketing topics. At Toluna, he closely worked with MRSI in 2021 to organize the Covid vaccination camp for the MR fraternity in Delhi/NCR. This Nobel mission was recognized and received the 'Mahatma Gandhi Award 2021 for Covid 19 Humanitarian Effort.' He is a forward thinker, curious by nature, believes in inclusivity and always comes with a can-do attitude. And he is funny too - 'the icing on the cake'!

Mukul can be described as a keen student of interdisciplinary research approaches with a compulsive itch for experimentation. He is one of the fastest risers in research in India currently.
Over the past decade, he has led various researches pertaining to Mixed Methodologies, Trends Foresighting, Consumer Ethnographies, Culture Decoding, Usage and Attitudes, Communication, Product Testing, Positioning and Equity, Experimental research designs, Programme and Impact evaluations and policy researches partnering corporates and social sector organisations drive behaviour change.
With an equally strong disposition towards both commercial and developmental sector research, his strength lies in the versatility of his experience and a tendency to draw linkages from one domain to the other. 
During the course of these researches, he has had various opportunities to work with consumers/ people belonging to different socio- economic classifications in urban, peri-urban and rural Indian centres, and across multiple categories/industries including but not limited to Automobiles, FMCG, Telecom, Consumer durables, Alcoholic beverages, Sustainability, e-commerce, Sports and entertainment, Education, Sexual and reproductive health and Nutrition.

Dr Derrick Gray has two decades of global experience in audience measurement and audience information systems for various media including Linear Television, Digital Video and Radio. Dr Gray holds a Doctor of Business Administration from Athabasca University in Canada where his award winning research focused on Digital Innovation and the application of Big Data within the Media Industry. He also holds a M.Sc. and B.Sc. in Statistics from the University of Toronto.
  Derrick has extensive experience volunteering with Professional Associations and has been a member of the MRSI’s Managing Committee since July 2019 and was appointed Vice President in June 2021. He has served as Chair of the MRSI’s Professional Standards Committee since January 2021. Prior to relocating to India, Dr Gray was active with the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association (MRIA) of Canada where he served as a member of their Board of Directors as well as Chair of their Standards Committee. Derrick has also held executive roles with the Broadcast Research Council, Canada.   Derrick is looking forward to continuing to serve the Indian Marketing Research industry as a member of the MRSI’s Managing Committee and Professional Standards Committee.

Sameer is a quintessential tech product guy, with passion to transform businesses and human lifes using technology. He is an Engineering graduate from Delhi College of Engineering (now DTU). Sameer started his career in health tech with Epic in WI (USA) where he worked in R&D and developed software for physicians in very large healthcare enterprises like Johns Hopkins, Kaiser and Cleveland Clinic. He has multiple software patents under his name and numerous awards across organizations. He then co-founded a health-tech start up in Florida, US, where his team developed MRI and CT scan viewers for iPhones and Android phones - in the age when these technologies were very new to all of us and blackberry was choice of smartphones for most physicians. The health-tech startup grew to over 100 engineers and has over 50+ US hospital using the tech.
Sameer moved to India few years back to focus on India market and lead product management for cloud telephony company Knowlarity. In 2015 he started Crownit and build communities of consumers across India to collect their purchase and consumption data across categories.
Since 2018, Crownit is a full service research agency and a data platform, with 150+ employees, using their proprietary engine mCollect to serve over 100+ enterprises in India which include 30 Fortune 500 companies. Sameer’s vision is to create an operating system for market research using suite of tech products mCollect + Eagle Insights which will bring velocity to research creation and consumption - hence having larger impact on businesses buying research.

Nitin Kamat is the Chief Marketing Officer of TAM Media Research, a joint venture between two global organizations, Nielsen and Kantar Media Research. He brings over 15 years of experience in the Media Research Industry. He has vast experience in areas of Finance, Administration, Compliance, People Management, and Organization Skills. His financial acumen and strong client relationship have helped TAM in gaining and retaining clients for more than a decade.
At TAM, Nitin heads the Client Servicing & Marketing Team. He is responsible for brand & marketing communications, product innovation, client acquisition. All through his journey at TAM, Nitin has witnessed a paradigm shift in the way media was consumed by both the consumers as well as advertisers. Interspersed with periodic disruption, Nitin has seen the co-existence of old and new media used by brands to deliver campaigns that resonate well with their audiences.

Centre for Behavioural Research, Future Factory.
A background in business, design and technology are an unusual mix and Geetika uses this everyday to increasing adoption and use of technology, to make our lives more meaningful, and deliver remarkable user experiences.Geetika founded the Centre for Behavioural Research in 2005, which is now affiliated to the Go-drej Group (under the award winning design consultancy, Future Factory). Working closely with global partners in the early years, The Centre developed a speciality in studying users and ex-plaining their behaviours, primarily towards improving adoption and use of technology. Ultimately helping technology teams build unparalleled user experiences. Geetika has worked on programs for Singapore and China’s design organisations, and for many of the worlds leading brands, and is an advocate for user centred design in technology. She is an advisory board member at Welingkar’s Business Design Masters program, a jury member at IIT Mumbai’s SINE, and also works closely at CII representing Industry-Academia collaboration and Innovation & Technology areas of work. On a personal front, Geetika is committed to enabling a gender inclusive workforce in the country and has held office in several womens networks. She currently holds the Chair for the Indian Women’s Network, Maharashtra State.

Future Factory. The future, delivered today.
Affiliated to the $ Bn Godrej Group, Future Factory is a global award winning design and innova-tion consultancy, one of the most successful in Asia. We help companies design and develop re-markable experiences for products and services.We are a full service studio, offering services from user research, to design and all the way to product development. Our award winning work has put us in a special league, having been awarded the globally acclaimed RedDot, Good Design and IDSA awards several times over the 25 years of our experience. We also have a specialised capability integrating manufactured products with IOT and SMART, and also hold several patents to our name. We have worked with some of the best brands globally, and have an impressive track record of delivering business success by design.

Prashant leads Consumer Insights for NielsenIQ South Asia and is the FMCG leader for South Asia, Middle East & Africa​​
With 27 years of experience in the Insights industry, Prashant is an expert in the brand , communications and media related research. ​​
Has worked in India, S.E Asia, North Asia and MENAP region; hand have partnered clients across sectors and across diferent stages of brand building. ​​​​

Manish Makhijani is part of the leadership team of Unilever’s People Data Centre - the leading edge insights facility within Unilever’s CMI function. He has worked for more than 25 years in research and insights (18 out of that have been with Unilever) in different parts of the world (Thailand, Singapore and London) working on different categories and brands. He has been part of leadership teams of different categories and markets in these roles integrating consumer insights with the business strategy.

Mr. Malhotra currently leads the Research function across the Broadcast, Digital and Publishing verticals of the group. He has also served as an honorary member of Technical Committees at IRS, NBA and is currently a member in the Technical Sub-Committee at BARC India and has been co-opted by MRUCI board as an Additional Director. He has been a prominent name in the Indian Media Space ever since he began his career with Network18 where he set up their viewership intelligence unit - The Edge. He has facilitated the entry of the channel Bloomberg in the Indian Television Space with invaluable contributions towards its distribution and consumer studies. He has distinguished himself having successfully led multiple Research verticals of News - Regional, Business and General News leading Aaj Tak to undisputed leadership in the Hindi News Space. On the digital front, he has worked on the heartland news portal Thelallantop.com and the launch of Bengali and Malayalam websites and has also centrally led marketing and research team of over 20 Radio Station Networks.
He holds a certification in “Data Science and Machine Learning: Making Data Driven Decisions" from the MIT Institute for Data, Systems and Society. The course incorporates the most cutting-edge concepts such as Implementing Machine Learning in solving complex problems, deep Learning, Predictive Analysis which are paramount for the future of our data generation systems and algorithms
A man of innovations, he has successfully accomplished many “Industry-First" experiments such as Eye Track Studies, Cross Pollinated Digital Music Test and Neuroscience Techniques in Television Research. He has spear-headed the development of in-house tool OneView which fuses Real-time Digital / Social Media views with Television Viewership fuelled by AI and ML as well as paywall and consumer revenues at the group.
In his vast and Omni-platform tenure, he has provided significant profitable contributions to ROI across editorial, marketing, revenue, inventory and distribution decisions. He has garnered appreciation for his insights on BIO News, Outlier Detection Methods, Integrated insights across platforms (social and owned assets), Direct to Customer Relationships with various subscription experiments and Behavioural Targeting etc. He has successfully operated across multiple measurement currencies such as BARC, ComScore, Similarweb, IRS and BARB.

Paru is a seasoned marketing professional with over 27 years’ experience across both qualitative and quantitative market research. She currently leads the multimillion-dollar Qualitative business and Sustainability Transformation Practice for Kantar, South Asia.
Her experience spreads across sectors like automotive, consumer durables & FMCG and she specializes in assisting clients innovate to solve for real consumer tensions and develop compelling brand strategies. Paru is an expert in in-depth exploratory work, portfolio and communication development work. She also led the design thinking team at Kantar, which enables the client journey from insight to outcome. Her vast dual experience allows her to tackle business issues in a methodology agnostic and human centric manner.
Paru regularly presents at various marketing forums and has also published several thought-leadership papers across leading business publications like WARC and The Economic Times.
Prior to joining Kantar in 2015, she was heading the research business at Synovate India (now IPSOS) and has also worked with ORG MARG (now Nielsen) in the past.
She’s earned her bachelor’s degree from Sri Ram Co

A dynamic professional with 19+ years of experience in Consumer Insight/Market Research.
Currently working as Director and Head- Insights and Analytics with Dr.Reddy’s Laboratories
Have worked with organisations such as Unilever, Ferrero, Axis Bank, Nielsen, TNS
A family man, am an avid reader and foodie.
I love the work I do i.e. Insighting/market research and hence would like get associated with MRSI in more active manner so that I can do more for the industry.

Soumya Mohanty is Managing Director & Head of Clients - Insights Division at Kantar. She brings with her over two decades years of experience in market research and consumer behaviour across sectors. Soumya was named ET’s Most Promising Female Leader for 20-21.
Her experience spans three areas-Data Analytics/Consumer Insights; building a resilient and commercially strong business and creating high performing teams. To be able to unearth human stories in data, take the voice of the consumer to board rooms or use data to make a real social impact is what keeps her going.
Over the years Soumya has worked across leading companies like Kantar, Nielsen and Ipsos.
An Economics (Hons) graduate from Delhi University, she is an alumnus of Indian Institute of Mass Communication. ​​

Sathya is the co-founder of Cognitive ROI Inc. and erstwhile President of MudraMax Media (DDB Mudra Group).
He is currently dedicating most of his time in providing Marketing ROI attribution and forward planning solutions @ Cognitive ROI Inc., which is deploying advanced AI based causal learning techniques. Passion area includes advising marketers on optimal marketing mix solutions and constantly learning about new technological solutions in the areas of advertising, marketing, and associated research.
Post Graduate in Science from the Annamalai University, in Tamil Nadu, Sathya comes with over 3 decades of professional experience and has worked with Heinz India, Cadila Laboratories, Ogilvy and Mather, Carat Media Services, Euro RSCG, Media Research Users Council (MRUC), Lintas Media Group, DDB Mudra Group and now Cognitive ROI Inc. Notably, his career experience spans across almost all allied fields of Advertising & Marketing, such as field sales, strategic media planning, media buying and management, Digital media, consumer research, data analytics & insights. A proud father of a 26 year old daughter Nandini (pursuing her masters in Art History and Curatorship with Melbourne University), Sathya likes music, the exciting challenges around the non-linear consumer journeys, Bible reading and exercising. ​

In 2019, Praveen Nijhara became CEO of Hansa Research Group, the largest Indian consumer insights & market research organization headquartered in India with offices in USA, Singapore and Bangladesh. In his role, he leads more than 900 staff and over the last four years has successfully managed to take Hansa Research to new heights in the industry. He has also developed new line of business for the company and during his tenure; Hansa opened new offices in Singapore and Bangladesh.
Praveen has been a part of the market research industry for more than 25 years having started his career as a researcher working with Market & Opinion Research International (MORI) in London. Prior to Hansa Research, he was with Kantar in a senior leadership role. In his last assignment at Kantar, he was the Head of the Customer Experience (CX) business for the South Asia region.
He is an internationally recognized CX Thought Leader and Keynote Speaker and has been named in the top ‘50 Most Impactful CX Consultants’. He is a Jury Member of many prestigious international and Indian awards such as International Customer Experience Awards - Amsterdam, Gulf Customer Experience Awards - Dubai and Customer Fest - India. He is on the Global Steering Board of Awards International and is currently also the Chairperson of the Asia Customer Experience Awards. He was also the Ambassador for the Gulf Customer Experience Awards in 2020.

• Has over 15 years of research experience
• He is responsible for defining of annual goals and objectives.
• Further he looks after the implementation of operational policies, devising  and implementing strategic plans, guiding the business teams and ensuring closure of business plans apart from managing day-to-day operations of the company.
• Also, looks after the Business Development - Domestic and Internationally
• Mr. Harsh even takes care of Company’s growth planning, organizational strategy development and execution, formulate strategies to Explore business opportunities.

Stephen has over 20 years of experience in consumer, customer and digital analytics. His marketing analytics work includes projects in the areas of consumer segmentation, consumer response modelling, predictive and digital analytics, and data management and visualization solutions. He has serviced clients such as Procter & Gamble, Mead Johnson, Flipkart and Coca Cola India to name a few. His focus has been to build offshore capabilities and develop processes and teams to deliver analytics. Prior to this, Stephen has worked at AT&T as a project manager & headed analytics at the Worldwide Marketing Hub at Lenovo.
Stephen has worked across CPG, IT, Food & Beverage and Retail domains. Some key projects include

• Identified drivers of category value and volume sales and to project sales forecast for the next two years for a leading infant formula manufacturer.
• Developing “Knowledge Hub"- a data management and visualization solution to bring together multiple data sets which would be the one source of truth for India's leading food and beverage manufacturer. Was given the “Bright Beginnings" award by the client.
Consulted CPG companies to chalk out country strategy for the next 4-5 years for its brand portfolio

Stephen has experience in setting up Analytics Centre of Excellence and being part of core team of two successfully acquired analytics services startups. This is enhanced by the two Masters’ degree - one in Marketing from Texas A&M University, College Station, USA and the other an MBA from T A Pai Management Institute, Manipal, India

As the SVP of Global Business at Market Xcel and with over 19+ years of experience in Sales, Fieldwork management, Operations Management, Client Relationship Management, Team Management, and Panel Management, I have mastered the ins and outs of the entire cycle of Business delivery. A visionary, always striving to stay ahead of the curve, I have fluently transformed businesses’ critical and complex projects into breakthrough achievements. From supporting agile methodology and customer-driven product development strategy as well as fostering online community engagement,  I believe in unfolding one’s potential for accomplishing the impossible.

Saurin with 23 years of experience in the research industry has worked on both the agency side and client side. He has rich experience across geographies from South East Asia to LATAM. His recent leadership roles have been at Unilever, Vodafone and Godrej.

A Management graduate from the Army Institute of Management, Kolkata , Girish has 22 years of experience in go-to-market strategy development, media planning, research & digital marketing, across diverse categories like Auto, FMCGs, Telecom, Media, Kids & Tourism.
As the Chief Marketing Officer at Axis My India Limited, he is creating the road map of AMI’s future brand identity i.e., Transitioning the positioning of the company from the best pollster to a Consumer Data Intelligence Company.
An effective thought leader and skilled marketer with distinguished capabilities in mar-tech, marketing effectiveness & consumer insights, in the past he has worked with market leaders like Tata Motors, Madison, Publicis & Nielsen in different roles.