News Broadcasting
India Today-Axis-My-India exit poll mechanism enters Harvard Business Class
NEW DELHI: Known for its most accurate predictions, the India Today Group’s exit-poll mechanism has made its way to the Harvard Business School curriculum.
The India Today-Axis-My-India post-poll surveys have given the most definitive predictions in about 95 per cent of all the elections that took place in the country between 2013 and 2020.
Now, the same research and multi-layered mechanism has become the first ever case study built by the Ivy League business school.
The case study, now part of the HBS’ classroom course on elections, highlights the complexity associated with successfully predicting elections in the world’s largest democracy, with all its diversity, varied geographies, shared international borders, sprawling rural populations and 23 different languages.
The case study, written by professor Ananth Raman, senior associate Ann Winslow and research associate Kairavi Dey, discusses the process that goes behind forecasting elections in India and the methods the channel uses to analyse data along with the research firm to reach accurate forecasts – from selection of field surveyors, hiring and training, data-collection technology, quality auditing, data analysis to final forecasting.
India Today Group is delighted to be associated with Axis-My-India and this global recognition. The association goes strong for years and the results are a testimony to the most focused research and proven methodology.
UPS Foundation professor of business logistics chair, OPM, HBS Professor Ananth Raman stated that predicting elections accurately in an extremely complex country like India is indeed challenging.
The case study, which illustrates numerous operational details, including those associated with training surveyors and moving them across different locations based on their linguistic and socio-economic identities to get a feel of the electorate’s pulse, will inspire students at the Harvard Business School to create their own entrepreneurial journey, he noted.
Professor Raman also mentioned that while they have seen numerous examples of experienced organisations struggling to predict election outcomes in the recent past, this case illustrates how a robust mechanism devised a process to predict outcomes most accurately.
What sets it apart from all the other competitive surveys is its reach across the length and breadth of the country (700+ districts), an average survey size of over five lakh people for national surveys, GPS-enabled tablets to maintain geographical sanctity, as well as computer-aided questionnaires backed by social intelligence to garner maximum data veracity.
News Broadcasting
Senior media executive Madhu Soman exits Zee Media
Former Reuters and Bloomberg leader says he leaves with “no regrets” after brief stint at WION and Zee Business
NOIDA: Madhu Soman, a veteran of global newsrooms and media sales floors, has stepped away from Zee Media Corporation after a short stint steering business strategy for WION and Zee Business.
In a reflective LinkedIn note marking his departure, Soman said his time within the network’s corridors was always likely to be brief. “Some chapters close faster than expected,” he wrote, signalling the end of a nearly two-year spell in which he oversaw both editorial partnerships and commercial strategy.
Soman joined Zee Media in 2022 after more than a decade abroad with Reuters and Bloomberg, returning to India to take on the role of chief business officer for WION and Zee Business. His mandate was ambitious: bridge the newsroom and the revenue desk while expanding digital and broadcast reach.
During the stint, Zee Business reached break-even for the first time since its launch in 2005, while WION refreshed programming and strengthened its digital footprint across platforms such as YouTube and Facebook.
But Soman suggested the cultural fit proved uneasy. Describing himself as a “cultural misfit”, he hinted at deeper tensions between editorial instincts shaped in global newsrooms and the realities of India’s television news ecosystem.
Before joining Zee, Soman spent more than seven years at Bloomberg in Hong Kong as head of broadcast sales for Asia-Pacific, expanding the company’s news syndication business across several markets. Earlier, he held senior editorial roles at Reuters, overseeing online strategy in India and managing Reuters Video Services from London.
His career began in television and wire reporting, including a stint with ANI during the 1999 Kargil conflict, before moving into digital publishing as India’s internet media landscape took shape.
Now, after nearly three decades in broadcast and digital media, Soman is leaving Delhi NCR and returning to his hometown, Trivandrum.
Exhausted, he admits. But unbowed. And with one quiet line that sums up the journey: he didn’t sell his soul — because some things, after all, are not for sale.
