STARRING 

• Praveen Gupta, Director and co-founder, Cross-Tab

On a recent trip to India we were keen to learn a bit more about the state of the research industry there and were pleased when Praveen Gupta invited us over to Cross-Tab’s Bangalore office for a chat.

Must admit that not having been to India for a long, long time, we didn’t know what to expect in terms of the state of development there. You hear about a sub-continent that is home to both extreme poverty and some of the most technologically advanced organisations in the world as a result of churning out probably more science graduates than anywhere else on earth.

Bangalore is one of three cities, alongside fellow southern cities Hyderabad and Chennai, vying for the super high tech crown. There’s an incredible buzz as you travel down surprisingly modern streets from the airport. We later learn that the local mayor did this strategically to give the impression that all of Bangalore was like that whereas this is only the case for certain ‘key routes’.

We got to know about Cross-Tab when we wrote about them hiring a global CEO from Microsoft (Kumar Mehta, a former top executive there). Cross-Tab’s claim to fame is both as a pioneer in MR outsourcing and, apparently, “the only full service online research agency in India”.

In this short chat with Praveen, a co-founder and modern-day Indian entrepreneur, we hear about…

• MR outsourcing (and how this accidentally became one of their strengths)
• Online research in India
• The middle class
• The super rich
• Indian entrepreneurism
• The market for MR
• Future challenges
• Blog mining

The full chat with Praveen was quite a bit longer and highly informative and stimulating. We’d like to thank him again for the warm hospitality.

 GUEST  Asim Srivastav, MD and founder, IROS, the new research outsourcing operation based in Dubai and India, joins us for a chat and to review the latest news

 TOPICS  Mumbai bombings; Gulf between research clients and agencies; Researcher productivity; Ipsos MORI gets ISO 20252 accreditation; Asim’s winner and loser of the week; R-Net summer social; AOL cancellation hell; Jack Honomichl exclusive podcast preview; Research outsourcing and the challenge of starting an outsourcing company

 NOTABLE MENTIONS  AOL, Crispin Beale, Infosys, Ipsos MORI, Jack Honomichl, R-Net, Rebecca Walker, RI, Tesco, UGAM, Vincent Ferrari, WNS

Music 2006 Pl@stic Soul and Brother Love from the PMN

Series:Weekly