MRSI to honour CK Sharma and Ashok Das with Lifetime Achievement Awards

New Delhi: MRSI has announced that it will confer Lifetime Achievement Awards to CK Sharma and Ashok Das at the upcoming Golden Key Awards 2024, scheduled to take place in Mumbai on Thursday, February 20, 2025. 

Furthermore, MRSI will bestow upon Lalit S Kanodia a Special Award.

Over an illustrious career spanning more than four decades, Das has served as a critical architect of India’s market research landscape. He turned around Hansa Research as an industry contender, while championing initiatives including the Indian Readership Survey (IRS), the Rural SEC, and INTAM, India’s first television meter service. 

In addition, his leadership at IMRB, MARG, and ORG-MARG extended the frontiers of market research into Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal. A regular contributor at ESOMAR and MRSI forums, and a guest lecturer at esteemed institutions such as IIM Ahmedabad and IIT Bombay, Das influenced both the practice and the pedagogical evolution of market research.

Similarly, Sharma - affectionately known as CK, is among the pioneers of the marketing research profession in India with over four decades of experience. As co-founder of Marketing & Business Associates (MBA) he led a team which developed expertise in analytical methods and applied them judiciously in helping clients solve problems. In the nineties, he played a major role in partnering with The Gallup Organization to introduce the newly born, and vastly important, concepts of customer and employee engagement in India. He later led Gallup's research and consulting team in Asia-Pacific before switching to the role of Thought Leader and Strategic Consultant on critical assignments. His endeavours which highlight his influential status in the industry have included working with the Public Affairs Centre to develop Citizen Scorecards widely used in India and, through the World Bank, in some countries in Eastern Europe; the development of customer experience frameworks for global banks, and building a conjoint measurement based system to stimulate farmer choices of herbicides in three Asian countries. A mentor, CK has shared his experience via teaching engagements at IIMA and MICA and, of course, with the vast alumni from MBA and Gallup, thus helping nurture new generations of industry leaders.

Kanodia extended his experience of the tech industry towards bringing changes in the operating models of global research and insights organisations. He spearheaded the digitisation of physical offline research as well as the integration of high-end data analytics in order to improve the quality and turnaround time of research insights. An alumnus of MIT (Massachusetts) and IIT Mumbai, Kanodia was instrumental in setting up India’s pioneering IT enterprise, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in 1967. He currently serves as the Chairman of the Datamatics Group of Companies. He has taught courses encompassing Business Applications of Statistics at MBA institutes globally such as MIT, and the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, while also serving in leading capacities at the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce and the IMC Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Nitin Kamat, President at Market Research Society of India, remarked, “We are profoundly grateful to Mr Ashok Das, Mr C. K. Sharma, and Dr Lalit S. Kanodia for their enduring support and visionary leadership. Their extraordinary contributions have shaped the very fabric of our industry, and their steadfast mentorship continues to guide professionals across the sector. We are privileged to recognise their outstanding achievements at the MRSI Golden Key Awards 2024.”