Market research loses one of its finest: Ashok Das passes away

The Indian market research industry has lost one of its most distinguished architects. Ashok Das, former president of the Market Research Society of India (MRSI), managing director of Hansa Research Group and a towering presence in the Indian research fraternity for over four decades, has passed away.

Das was no ordinary number-cruncher. An IIT Kharagpur engineer who sharpened his thinking at IIM Calcutta, he brought rigour, vision and an institution-builder’s instinct to a profession that was still finding its feet in India when he entered it in the early 1980s. He began at IMRB International, rose through the ranks at MARG and ORG-MARG, and went on to serve as president of AC Nielsen ORG-MARG, one of the most consequential roles in Indian research, before taking the helm at Hansa Research Group in 2002, where he remained, latterly as senior adviser, until the end.

The list of things he helped build reads like a syllabus for the industry itself. Das was instrumental in championing the Indian Readership Survey (IRS), shaping the Rural Socio-Economic Classification framework and, perhaps most significantly, steering INTAM, India’s first television audience measurement service, into existence. He also extended market research frameworks beyond Indian borders into Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal, at a time when few were thinking that ambitiously.

In recognition of a career that quite literally helped define how India measures itself, the MRSI honoured him with its Lifetime Achievement Award at the Golden Key Awards.

“His leadership, vision, and commitment to the profession will continue to inspire our industry,” the MRSI said in a tribute, adding that his contributions had shaped not just institutions and methodologies, but generations of researchers.

He leaves behind colleagues, students and an industry that is measurably better for his having been part of it. Some things, no survey can quantify.