The regional office will support a longitudinal ageing study in India (LASI) covering the Meghalaya and Sikkim states, commissioned by the Indian government’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. MRSS said it will also look to cover the northeastern region’s remaining markets in the coming years.

Srikant Patel, head of the company’s social research practice, said: "LASI will provide a longitudinal data set for designing programme and policies for older population in the country. LASI would also collect an extensive range of biomarkers which can be useful for studying a variety of social behaviours and environments, health risks and chronic disease conditions."

The company has also appointed Retassh Bhansali as its first global chief financial officer of consolidated operations.

Bhansali has previously held management level roles at telecoms and IT companies in the UK and Singapore. He will be based in Singapore and India.

Raj Sharma, chairman of MRSS India, said: "To have [Bhansali] onboard fills an important void and will make our financial management engine more robust. We recognised that this is required and we have now reached the size to have a CFO of this stature and so we have timed this appointment appropriately."