Ashok Das: The man who never sold his soul

Life is funny. The way we respond to life itself changes completely when life itself goes out of life. I was well aware of Ashok Das’ condition but could not gather the courage to meet him in person. Yesterday when Kaushik (of Reliance) told me about Ashok I felt sad and then the mind filled with memories. The educated class puts a huge premium on sobriety over lucid emotion; hence I am not sure how my recounting of history will go down with the readers (assuming someone will read this).

I met Ashok at World Trade Centre, Cuffe Parade, at a MARG gathering where they were proposing the introduction of a People Meter for measuring television viewing. This was a time when we had graduated from a printed report to viewership data being sent every week on a floppy disk. The first to introduce the People Meter in India was IMRB under the leadership of Ramesh Thadani, a legend in Indian research. But for some of us who were young rebels, that was below par. Also, it used the wrong technology for a country like India, where the cable operator switched frequencies (MHz) every day. Ashok introduced INTAM. TAM from IMRB existed, but INTAM came, seen, and conquered. They got more subscribers, introduced an algorithm-based optimizer, and used a technology that was years ahead of TAM. But most importantly, Ashok created an “honest-to-God” organization—open, objective, innovative, and fiercely passionate. It was a natural extension of Ashok’s persona. What amazed me was his ability to motivate a huge number of people, exceptionally talented ones, so that they believed what Ashok believed.

But globalization had reached India. AC Nielsen, which after TAM’s failure bought MARG mainly for INTAM, and then VNU, the Dutch conglomerate, bought AC Nielsen. VNU had a peculiar situation: there were two People Meter systems in India competing with each other. VNU decided to merge ORG-MARG into AC Nielsen, and one morning Ashok came to meet me in my office and announced that he was on his way to a VNU board meeting where he would be announcing his resignation.

This was the man who never sold his soul and chose an uncertain future over secure MNC comfort.

Ashok was a rare combination of IIT (Bombay) – IIM (Kolkata), an ace Bridge player and a loyal Gold Flake Filter smoker. I have been in Mumbai since 1990 but have seen only a handful of people with such great academic backgrounds in Advertising, Media and Research

Ashok & I spent almost 14 years together working on a single project which both of us were extremely proud of—IRS. Ashok, along with the Swami brothers, created Hansa Research Group (HRG). He was a co-founder cum MD. Till 1995, Indian print research was very primitive and “matlabi”. It took two rebels and some of the people who believed in them to come together and propose a proper research that went beyond just readership and became a “by the industry and for the industry initiative”. The rebels were Roda Mehta (of Ogilvy) & Brahm Vasudev (of Hawkins), and the friends who extended unconditional support were Ashok Advani (of Business India) and Shekhar Swamy (of R K Swamy). A lot of agencies came together to support the initiative as volunteers. MRUC (Media Research Users’ Council) was formed. This, in my mind, was the first-time clients, agencies & media owners came together for an intellectual pursuit collectively.

Here, from 1997 to 2010, Ashok & I worked shoulder to shoulder and did things that no other agency could ever dream of. We introduced a continuous study resulting in quarterly reporting, worked on HPI (Household Potential Index), I-LAP (IRS Local Area Potential), etc. We even attempted to fuse the TV data with print to create a unified currency. IRS was the one and only single-source data system that India ever had. Of course, there were many attempts by others, but none came anywhere near IRS.

A lot of my younger friends make fun of me by asking me why I spent so much time working for advancement of measurement science as a volunteer, what ROI did I get. I have been fortunate to meet so many great human beings who thought of the industry apart from self. Ashok was one of them. He did so many experiments for improvement on his own (in today’s corporate lingo, by letting go of the temptation of higher profit)

Ashok you may have gone, but what I learnt from you will always remain with me