Bharat Kapadia Steps Down From MRUC Board

He was elected Vice Chairman and Member of the Board of Directors in the AGM held in September 2009.

Rajat Arora | Delhi | March 8, 2011

Bharat Kapadia, Director of Lokmat Group has stepped down from the Vice Chairman position and Board of Directors of Media Research Users Council (MRUC). He was elected Vice Chairman and Member of the Board of Directors in the AGM held in September 2009.

Although there was no official confirmation coming from MRUC, industry sources close to the development informed BestMediaInfo.com that the development is a part of routine process and Bharat Bhai, as popularly known, has stepped down on personal grounds. However, it is understood that Bharat Bhai has taken the decision to concentrate upon Lokmat in the wake of its upcoming IPO and entry of Dainik Bhaskar Group's Marathi newspaper Divya Marathi into Maharashtra.

Bharat Bhai had joined the Lokmat Group as a Director on the board in December 2008. At the Lokmat group he has been involved with the overall functioning and growth of the group. An entrepreneur turned professional, Kapadia co-owned and ran Chitralekha Group till few years back as an Editor and Associate Publisher. Prior to this, Kapadia was heading the Jagran Network18 print JV Jagran18 as its CEO and Managing Editor. The plans for the business daily were later shelved. Before that, Kapadia was with Divya Bhaskar as Executive Director for the group.

MRUC has been in news from past few months for several reasons. In December 2010, the council had announced the partnership with Australia's oldest and largest independent market research company, Roy Morgan Research (RMR), to launch the country's first national Single Source survey. Then just after a week of this announcement, MRUC CEO Joseph Eapen, who had played a key role in the partnership, moved on from the council. Soon after the exit of Eapen, the MoU with Roy Morgan Research was reviewed and terminated on the ground of certain unacceptable clauses.

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