MRUC announces appointment of six new board members

Media Research Users Council (MRUC) has announced the appointment of six new board members after its 23rd Annual General Meeting. The new members are Raj Jain, CEO, Bennett Coleman and Company; Rajiv Verma, CEO, HT Media; Girish Agarwal, Director, DB Corp; Vikram Sakhuja, Group CEO, Madison World; Sandeep Sharma, President, RK Swamy Media Group and Sameer Satpathy, Chief Executive, Personal Care, ITC.

Ashish Bhasin, Chairman and CEO, South Asia, Dentsu Aegis Network, was recently announced as the new MRUC Chairman, who takes over from I Venkat, Director, Eenadu. Pratap Pawar, Chairman, Sakal Media, was elected as Vice-Chairman replacing Sanjay Tripathy.

Other members of the board include Inderjeet Singh, Brand Leader, Consumer and Market Knowledge, Procter & Gamble India; Ravindra Kumar, Editor and Managing Director, The Statesman; Satvir S Kataria, President, Marketing, Hari Bhoomi; Siddharth Kothari, Director, Rajasthan Patrika, Kartik Sharma, Managing Director, South Asia, Maxus; Anupriya Acharya, CEO, Publicis Media India; NP Sathyamurthy, Executive Director, DDB Mudra Group and President, OMD Max; Shashi Sinha, CEO, IPG Media Brands; Rohit Gupta, President, Sony Pictures Network India, I Venkat, Director, Eenadu, Shailesh Gupta, Director, Jagran Prakashan; Punit Misra, CEO, Domestic Broadcast, Zee Entertainment Enterprises and Rajeev Singh, Member (Finance), Prasar Bharti.

Commenting on his appointment as MRUC Board Member, Sakhuja said, “It is a privilege to serve on the MRUC Board. In an era of burgeoning multiple media, the need to have a single credible media baseline is important. It is also critical to have a good fix on print readership to support and give confidence to one of the few markets where print continues to grow. The IRS has played this role all these years, and is now coming back after a gap. Inevitably there will be some gainers and losers. The challenge lies in holding all constituents together in this cause irrespective of how they fare. I see an opportunity in building robustness of data by collating both readership and circulation data under the aegis of RSCI.”

On being elected as a board member, Agarwal said, “I am very excited to join the MRUC Board as I strongly believe that this is the most opportune time for the industry to provide relevant data to the stakeholders. MRUC has contributed a lot for the industry. In the given changed scenario, under the leadership of a new Chairman, the high energy board will certainly do a lot going forward in terms of helping the stakeholders get the required and much awaited knowledge and information from research.”

Satpathy noted, “The Indian media industry is witnessing a radical change in the way it is consumed. In an always-on social world, media and marketing research is set to become more dynamic. I am happy to be a part of the MRUC Governing Board and look forward to working closely with the board to help create a robust research framework.”

Sharma commented on his appointment, “MRUC is a premier industry body and I am happy to be part of the board. I look forward to encouraging multi-media research measuring ‘efficacy and impact’ to aid better ROI driven decisions by the industry. Secondly MRUC should leverage new age media and technology to enhance the research process and offer new research products incorporating real time data.”

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