MAM
MRSI elects new managing committee with Manish Makhijani as president
Mumbai: India’s foremost industry-led market research body Market Research Society of India (MRSI) on Friday announced the formation of the managing committee for the tenure of 2022-2024. Hindustan Unilever global insights director Manish Makhijani was elected as the new president and took over from Datamatics Global Services executive vice president and global head – research & analytics solutions Sandeep Arora.
Manish worked as the Vice President of MRSI for the last three years and has been instrumental in creating and delivering several initiatives like the Golden Key Awards, Hackathon event at the Annual Seminar, etc. Manish is also a passionate advocate of nurturing talent and has been at the forefront of inspiring new talent to come to the industry and contribute toward business growth.
Additionally, Paru Minocha and Saurin Shah were elected as Vice-Presidents, Prashant Kolleri as the Secretary, and Nitin Kamat as the Treasurer for MRSI. The election of the new managing committee members was held at MRSI’s 34th Annual General Meeting on 7 July 2022 in Mumbai.
MRSI’s managing committee is represented by companies across research agencies, research users and service providers in the market research industry. The newly-elected managing committee continues to stay focussed on maintaining and ensuring the highest quality standards thus establishing India’s dominant position in the global market research industry. The focus of MRSI for the next couple of years would be to build on the momentum it has created in the last few years and focus on building a stronger network where all the members can benefit from each other, building a talent pipeline in the industry and instilling a sense of pride in the work being done.
Congratulating the newly elected president, Datamatics Global Services executive vice president and global head – research & analytics solutions and Market Research Society of India’s outgoing president Sandeep Arora said, “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 2019-2021 managing committee took on some of the MRSI’s most significant initiatives till date. The committee was responsible for the successful release of India’s first-ever comprehensive market sizing report titled ‘The Indian Research & Insights Industry 2021’. The report stated that the approximately $2.3 billion Indian research and insights industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12 per cent to 14 per cent to reach $4.2 billion by 2025-26. Rising to the numerous challenges on account of the Covid-19 pandemic, the former managing committee under the leadership of Sandeep Arora embraced online and hybrid formats to drive engagement. The committee also supported fieldwork investigators who are the foot soldiers of the industry through the MRSI Freelance Investigator Fund in 2020.
On being elected as MRSI’s president for the next two years, Hindustan Unilever global insights director Manish Makhijani said, “I am incredibly privileged to carry forward the legacy of so many stalwarts in the industry. Our industry has come a long way and sits at the intersection of changing consumer behaviour, technology, and marketing solutions. It is now up to us to really bring out the contribution of insights into the growth of the business in this complex and evolving world.”
Here’s the list of MRSI’s managing committee member for the term of 2022-2024:
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MAM
Nielsen launches co-viewing pilot to sharpen TV measurement
Super Bowl pilot to refine how shared TV audiences are counted
MUMBAI: Nielsen is taking a fresh stab at one of television’s oldest blind spots: how many people are actually watching the same screen. The audience-measurement giant on February 4 unveiled a co-viewing pilot that uses wearable devices to better capture shared viewing, starting with America’s biggest broadcast stage.
The trial begins with Super Bowl LX on NBC on February 8, 2026, before extending to other high-profile live sports and entertainment events in the first half of the year. The goal is simple but commercially potent: count viewers more accurately, especially during live spectacles that pull families and friends to one screen.
The new approach leans on Nielsen’s proprietary wearable meters, wrist-worn devices that resemble smartwatches. These passively capture audio signatures from TV content, logging exposure to shows, films and live events without requiring viewers to sign in or self-report. In theory, fewer clicks, fewer lapses, better data.
Karthik Rao, Nielsen’s ceo, cast the move as part of a broader measurement push. He said the company’s task is to keep pushing accuracy as clients invest heavily in live programming that draws mass audiences. The co-viewing pilot, he added, builds on upgrades such as Big Data + Panel measurement, out-of-home expansion, live-streaming metrics and wearable-based tracking.
Co-viewing is not new territory for Nielsen, which has long tried to estimate how many people sit before a single set. What is new is the heavier integration of wearables and passive detection to reduce reliance on active inputs from panel homes.
For now, the pilot comes with caveats. Co-viewing estimates from the trial will not be folded into Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel ratings, which remain the industry’s trading currency. Instead, pilot findings will be shared with clients a few weeks after final Big Data + Panel ratings are delivered. Clients may disclose those findings publicly.
More impact data will follow later this year. Full integration into Nielsen’s marketing-intelligence suite is slated as a longer-term play, with a target of bringing co-viewing into currency measurement for the 2026–2027 season. This is only phase one, with further co-viewing enhancements planned beyond 2026 and additional timelines to be announced.
The push fits a wider pattern. Nielsen has in recent years expanded big-data integration, adopted first-party data for live-streaming measurement and broadened out-of-home tracking. It also positions itself as the reference point for streaming metrics through products such as The Gauge and the Nielsen Streaming Top 10.
In a market where billions of ad dollars hinge on decimal points, counting who is in the room matters. If Nielsen can pin down shared viewing, the humble sofa could become prime measurement real estate. The race to count every eyeball just found a new wrist to watch.
Brands
Delhivery chairman Deepak Kapoor, independent director Saugata Gupta quit board
Gurugram: Delhivery’s boardroom is being reset. Deepak Kapoor, chairman and independent director, has resigned with effect from April 1 as part of a planned board reconstitution, the logistics company said in an exchange filing. Saugata Gupta, managing director and chief executive of FMCG major Marico and an independent director on Delhivery’s board, has also stepped down.
Kapoor exits after an eight-year stint that included steering the company through its 2022 stock-market debut, a period that saw Delhivery transform from a venture-backed upstart into one of India’s most visible logistics platforms. Gupta, who joined the board in 2021, departs alongside him, marking a simultaneous clearing of two senior independent seats.
“Deepak and Saugata have been instrumental in our process of recognising the need for and enabling the reconstitution of the board of directors in line with our ambitious next phase of growth,” said Sahil Barua, managing director and chief executive, Delhivery. The statement frames the exits less as departures and more as deliberate succession, a boardroom shuffle timed to the company’s evolving scale and strategy.
The resignations arrive amid broader governance recalibration. In 2025, Delhivery appointed Emcure Pharmaceuticals whole-time director Namita Thapar, PB Fintech founder and chairman Yashish Dahiya, and IIM Bangalore faculty member Padmini Srinivasan as independent directors, signalling a tilt towards consumer, fintech and academic expertise at the board level.
Kapoor’s tenure spanned Delhivery’s most defining years, rapid network expansion, public listing and the push towards profitability in a bruising logistics market. Gupta’s presence brought FMCG and brand-scale perspective during a period when ecommerce volumes and last-mile delivery economics were being rewritten.
The twin exits, effective from the new financial year, underscore a familiar corporate rhythm: founders consolidate, veterans rotate out, and fresh voices are ushered in to script the next chapter. In India’s hyper-competitive logistics race, even the boardroom does not stand still.
MAM
Meta appoints Anuvrat Rao as APAC head of commerce partnerships
At Locofy.ai, Rao helped convert a three-year free beta into a paid engine, clocking 1,000 subscribers and 15 enterprise clients within ten days of launch in September 2024. The low-code startup, backed by Accel and top tech founders, is famed for turning designs into production-ready code using proprietary large design models.
Before that, Rao founded generative AI venture 1Bstories, which was acquired by creative AI platform Laetro in mid-2024, where he briefly served as managing director for APAC. Alongside operating roles, he has been an active investor and advisor since 2020, backing startups such as BotMD, Muxy, Creator plus, Intellect, Sealed and CricFlex through a creator-economy-led thesis.
Rao spent over eight years at Google, holding senior partnership roles across search, assistant, chrome, web and YouTube in APAC, and earlier cut his teeth in strategy consulting at OC&C in London and investment finance at W. P. Carey in Europe and the US.
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