MRUCI Names Kaacon Sethi CEO To Bring Back The Readership Survey
The Media Research Users Council India has appointed Kaacon Sethi as chief executive, with effect from 8 October 2026, to lead the revival of the Indian Readership Survey.
- Role: chief executive, MRUCI, from 8 October 2026
- Task: reviving the Indian Readership Survey with an enhanced study design, refined methodology and a new framework for measuring media quality and impact
- Previously: chief corporate marketing officer at the Dainik Bhaskar Group for over a decade, and client lead on the Kantar and Dainik Bhaskar Urban Bharat initiative
- Earlier: chief executive of K Sera Sera Productions, branded content solutions leadership at Lintas Media Group, and marketing and sales head for SET plus business head for the launch of Sony MAX at Sony Entertainment Television
- Experience: more than 35 years across media, entertainment, sports, content and marketing
What Kaacon Sethi Has Been Asked To Do
Rebuild a currency, not just restart a survey. The IRS has been the most argued-over number in Indian print, and the brief as stated goes beyond fieldwork to a new framework for measuring media quality and impact, which is a different question from how many people read a title.
Vikram Sakhuja, chairman of MRUCI, said audience measurement not only needs credibility, it also needs reimagination.
Sethi said audience measurement has an important role to play in helping the media industry understand changing media consumption behaviour.
Why The Background Fits
Because the job is as much diplomatic as methodological. A readership currency has to be accepted by publishers who compete with each other and by advertisers who pay against it, and a decade inside a large newspaper group plus work on a Kantar readership initiative puts Sethi on both sides of that table.
The date to watch is the study design. Credibility in measurement is won or lost on method, and nothing has yet been published about sample, frequency or who will conduct the fieldwork.