India's MRSI Names New President

The Market Research Society of India (MRSI) has named Manish Makhijani, Global Insights Director of Hindustan Unilever, as President of its Managing Committee for the period 2022-2024. He takes over from Sandeep Arora, EVP and Global Head - Research & Analytics Solutions at Datamatics.

Not-for-profit MRSI was founded in 1988 to encourage the development and regulation of market research, and to promote it among the public, advertisers, ad agencies, publishers and the government. The 2019-2021 Managing Committee was responsible for the release of India's first-ever market sizing report: 'The Indian Research & Insights Industry 2021'.

Makhijani (pictured) joins as MRSI President after nearly nineteen years at Unilever, where he is currently global director for the company's insights facility. He began his MR career at ORG-MARG (now part of Nielsen), and later moved to Kantar TNS as a Senior Project Manager, and then to Synovate (acquired by Ipsos in 2011) as Business Head in Mumbai. For the past three years Makhijani has served as MRSI VP, helping to create and deliver key initiatives including the Golden Key Awards, Hackathon event, and the annual seminar.

Makhijani is joined on the Managing Committee by Kantar MD Paru Minocha and Saurin Shah, VP & Head of Global Insights at Godrej Consumer Products, who were elected as Vice Presidents. In addition, NielsenIQ Leader - Consumer Insights: South Asia Prashant Kolleri has been named Secretary; and Nitin Kamat, CMO at TAM Media Research, is the Treasurer.

Outgoing President Arora comments: 'I thank the MRSI members for supporting the current Managing Committee with their trust, especially when we had to change our course and plans drastically during the unprecedented Covid period. Thankfully, most of the key initiatives (locally and globally) we launched during that time have given a new direction and scale to the vision of the association going forward. I wish the incoming Managing Committee under the leadership of Manish Makhijani all the best to carry this momentum forward'.

The other Managing Committee members for 2022-2024 term are:

• Arindam Bhattacharya - Lucid
• Shuvadip Banerjee - ITC
• Parijat Chakraborty - Ipsos
• Dixit Chanana - Toluna
• Mukul Gautam - Purple Audacity
• Derrick Gray - BARC
• Sameer Grover - Crownit
• Amitabh Mishra - Dr Reddy's Laboratories
• Sathyamurthy Namakkal - DDB Mudra Group
• Praveen Nijhara - Hansa Research Group
• Stephen Samuel - Kantar
• Girish Upadhyay - Axis My India, and
• Vivek Malhotra - TV Today Network Ltd.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.