Manish Makhijani, (pictured above, second from left) global insights director of Hindustan Unilever, was nominated as the new president and takes over from Sandeep Arora, executive vice-president and global head of research & analytics solutions at Datamatics Global Services.

Makhijani has worked as vice-president of MRSI for the past three years and has been instrumental in creating and delivering several initiatives, such as the Golden Key Awards and the Hackathon event at the association’s annual seminar. He is also a passionate advocate of nurturing talent and has been at the forefront of inspiring new candidates to come to the industry and contribute toward business growth.

Additionally, Paru Minocha and Saurin Shah were elected as vice-presidents, Prashant Kolleri as secretary, and Nitin Kamat as treasurer.

Congratulating the newly elected president, Arora said: “I thank the MRSI members for supporting the current managing committee with their trust, especially when we had to change our course and plans drastically during the unprecedented Covid period.

“Thankfully, most of the key initiatives we launched during that time have given a new direction and scale to the vision of the association going forward. I wish the incoming managing committee under the leadership of Manish Makhijani all the best to carry this momentum forward.”

The 2019-2021 managing committee took on some of the MRSI’s most significant initiatives to date. The committee was responsible for the successful release of India’s first-ever comprehensive market sizing report, entitled The Indian Research & Insights Industry 2021. The report stated that the Indian research and insights industry is worth approximately $2.3 billion and is expected to grow between 12% and 14% to reach $4.2 billion by 2026.

The former managing committee, under the leadership of Sandeep Arora, embraced online and hybrid formats to drive engagement due to the constraints imposed by the pandemic. The committee also supported fieldwork investigators, described as “the foot soldiers of the industry”, through the MRSI freelance investigator fund in 2020.