Hansa Research, Ipsos sign MoU to jointly bid for IRS

Hansa Research, Ipsos sign MoU to jointly bid for IRS

Ipsos-India

MUMBAI: Hansa Research and Ipsos have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to jointly bid for the new Indian Readership Survey (IRS) contract that starts with IRS 2013.

Hansa Research has been conducting the IRS since 2003. So far, Hansa has been doing it with Media research Users Council (MRUC).

The Indian Readership Survey (IRS) has been owned and administered by Media Research Users’ Council (MRUC), an Industry body set up in 1994. Earlier in 2011, MRUC and ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulation) decided to merge their parallel readership studies by entering into an alliance to form the RSCI, which is now taking charge of administering the IRS.

Hansa Research Group MD Ashok Das said, “We are happy and excited to work with Ipsos on this prestigious project, and hope to bring in a number of new ideas into the IRS.”

This joint bid will combine Hansa’s experience of readership measurement in the Indian context with Ipsos’ global expertise of conducting readership surveys in 60 countries.

Ipsos-India CEO Mick Gordon said, “We are delighted to be working with Hansa on this very exciting project and we hope we can persuade RSCI (Readership Studies Council of India) that our combination will be a very big plus for the industry. Ipsos measures readership in more than 60 countries around the world and has made a name for itself in introducing many innovations into this specialist area of market research - we were the first to use CAPI and DS-CAPI in readership measurement, for example. We believe we can add significant value to Hansa‘s proven expertise and experience on the ground in India.”

Through the joint participation of these two entities, the two companies expect to make a very strong and forward looking pitch for the new IRS contract.

The current sample size of the IRS is 262,000.

Hansa Research is a global full service market research agency headquartered in India, conducting market research in 77 countries with offices in India and US. Over the last few years, Hansa has developed sound mechanisms to reduce fieldwork related issues that has been widely acclaimed by research users for its ability to minimise some long standing industry weaknesses.

The Pulitzers are given out annually by Columbia University on the recommendation of a board of journalists and others. Each award carries a $10,000 prize except for the public service award, which is a gold medal.

Matt Wuerker of Politico, Massoud Hossaini of Agence France-Presse, and Craig F. Walker of The Denver Post bagged the prize in Editorial Cartooning, Breaking News Photography and Feature Photography respectively.