Ipsos opens offshore Data Services Centre in Thane to enhance efficiency

Global market research company Ipsos on Tuesday launched its swanky Data Services Centre (DSC) in the Thane city of Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR). The Thane centre, which is the first of its kind in India for Ipsos, will handle production offshoring for its North America unit and then for other evolved markets– in the areas of survey programming, project management, data processing and data analytics.

So far, Ipsos has been outsourcing its data work to various firms across many countries. “The India centre will not streamline our work and enhance our efficiency, but it will also help us ensure data privacy”, says Hamish Munro, global CEO, Ipsos Interactive Services (IIS) and Operations who was present on the occasion. 

Munroe further said, “India has a great talent pool and we are capitalizing the resources for high-end data analysis and project management for our global clients, to provide them with high-quality outputs.” 

The Paris-headquartered company is set to hire for 300 plus positions at the Thane centre in the next three months. "In the next phase, we have planned to take staff strength up to 2,000", Ipsos officials told e4m.

Amit Adarkar, CEO Ipsos India, said, "India is a key priority market for Ipsos and the setting up of the offshore hub reinforces Ipsos’ commitment to India not only as a key player in full-service market research entity but also as a key market for offshore production work for the long haul".

The India unit has recently reorganized its leadership team to drive ambitious and aggressive growth plans. Haribabu Rajendran, who has been at the heart of establishing the Data Services in India, has been appointed the Managing Director of Mumbai DSC. Apart from internal changes, Garima Mall and Pooja Doshi were brought in as executive directors from Kantar and NielsenIQ respectively.

Cristophe Cambournac, CEO APAC & AMEA, Ipsos, and Tom Paul, MD Operations, North America were also present on the occasion.

Paul told e4m, "A centre like this gives us the opportunity to centralise our fragmented work across North America, scale it for better synergy. We are looking at double-digit growth with this synergy."

On evolving market research work, Paul said, "The work is much more agile and clients require data faster than before. To deliver research insights faster and in real-time, involvement of IT tools has gone up."

Ipsos is actively recruiting for over 300 positions in offshore production, primarily in the areas of survey programming, project management, data processing, and data analytical roles. "The jobs are open to all graduates, including freshers from IT/Engineering streams, who have interest in Market Research. This includes transgenders and those with different abilities. Ipsos believes in inclusion and pays parity", Shallet D’Silva, the HR head of the company tells e4m.

Ipsos came to India only in 2007, through a joint venture with Indica, a Mumbai-based market research company. Ipsos handles clients including Hindustan Unilever, Dabur, Nestle and GlaxoSmithKline.