Once upon a time, there was a curious man named Sanjay Pal. From a young age, he never stopped seeking answers to questions. The thirst for knowledge led him to live in three different countries over the span of two decades, shaping him into a leading consumer insights and analytics expert. Having served clients across the Asia Pacific region with impactful insights for large and small organisations across countries, Sanjay’s expertise in brand-marketing and stakeholder management made him a favourite among leading companies in the BFSI, F&B, and Telecommunications sectors. After being a valuable player of the leadership team at two big data-driven/market research consulting companies, Sanjay set up decrypt in 2021, where he remains committed to building long-term relationships with local and multinational companies based in emerging markets and shaping them as market leaders. As a higher-end analytics practitioner and neuroscience enthusiast, he uses superior cognitive skills and his signature approach to understand consumers’ expectations and transform customer experiences while decoding complex market situations, consumer household behaviour, and media consumption patterns. An avid outdoor sports enthusiast, Sanjay is at the top of his game both physically and mentally and passionately follows socio-political movements of Asia.

In inner circles, Sayan Chattopadhyay is an authority on consumer insights and is well-known for developing the finest instruments to elicit consumer responses. A seasoned allrounder, Sayan has worked across the entire stage of product life cycle with large, medium, and small-sized companies across varied sectors in foods, tobacco, personal care, and media, excelling in business development, account management, client management, and training. He has partnered with FMCG & non-FMCG businesses to conduct Ad-Hoc and Continuous research, service domestic and foreign clients, and shed light on segmentation, concept and product test, pack test, communication researches, and brand health dipsticks. Sayan has aced multiple categories for the Indian and Bangladeshi markets. His belief in guiding, grooming, and leading teams to deliver answers to the client’s questions and delivering the best quality and nurturing relationships with internal and external stakeholders is what makes him the champion that he is. A master strategist who is knowledgeable in dozens of fields, Sayan has 16+ years of experience with multiple MNCs. Prior to joining decrypt in 2021, he led the consumer insights practice for Nielsen India in East India and served in an advisory capacity in the FMCG domain with Nielsen Bangladesh. When he is not unravelling the formula to creating a successful brand, Sayan, an avid movie and web series buff, ponders ways to marry traditional research techniques and neuromarketing to take insights to the next level.

With 14+ years of research and consulting experience, Manisha has been rigorously involved in planning customer experience strategies for various consumer-facing industries including financial services, retail, auto and telecommunications. Her green thumb goes beyond her passion for horticulture—it is evident in her expertise in customer engagement, employee engagement, customer experience transformation, and customer churn reduction. Manisha is a force to reckon with in conceptualising the customer experience from scratch. Her passion for everything sustainable has germinated into projects that have leveraged customer data to drive decisions on locations and loyalty programs to increase experience organically for organisations. She has provided extensive training and support for customer experience team members to cultivate the best-in-class solutions by developing proper standards, policies, and procedures. Her instinct is to take a holistic view on management challenges and projects. Firmly rooted in economics, Manisha has been responsible for tapping into high-yielding results for a global mobile operator and a South-Asian healthcare client.

Rana is well known in the FMCG, non-FMCG, and Telecom space as both an everyman and a champion. With nearly two decades of research and analytics consulting experience across multiple verticals in different countries, Rana has a proven track record of delivering key insights across organisations in different stages of the product life cycle–starting from ideation to estimating ROI. Rana’s keen perception is his trump card to understanding the nuances of consumer behaviour that involves trade-off, developing product offer bundles using market basket analysis, and piecing together propensity models for better customer targeting. Rana has championed classification and targeting techniques in developing look-alike models, segmentation, and latent class conjoint models to drive meaningful consumer insights. Prior to joining decrypt in 2021, Rana was responsible for the consumer insights practice of Nielsen in South India. No matter the client’s requirements—from product innovation to pricing to post launch product performance measurement—Rana remains committed to solving marketing problems with acute observations of human behaviour for a complete understanding of consumers in an everchanging, unpredictable market environment.

Like a master sleuth, Achala connects the dots between multiple points of data to uncover the larger patterns or insights underlying behaviour. With 25 years of experience in research in India, USA, Indonesia, and Singapore (and SEA) across a wide range of categories in CPG products—foods, personal care, hair and skin care, fabric care, and alcohol—Achala is known for her proficiency in understanding cultural nuance and context around consumer behaviour. Her deductive powers are phenomenal, and she has contributed two papers to ESOMAR, including an award-winning paper on insights rooted in the methods and inductive reasoning of Sherlock Holmes. With a special interest in consumer decision-making, heuristics and cultural studies, branding, and communication, Achala continues to exceed expectations with her powers of observation and deductive reasoning. In her spare time, she enjoys reading and traveling to enrich her worldview and become a more sensitive researcher.

Venkat is the ace up our sleeve. Since 1992, he has been seasoned in field operations through globe-trotting adventures exploring small town food and culture or casually touring iron ore mines and thermal power plants. Venkat has a knack for corporate, industrial, and pharma research. He has gained extensive experience in setting up television viewership panel and excelled in innovative studies like the family budget study, a panel on lube oils, evaluation of special display in retail outlets, and the evaluation of hoardings. When it comes to setting up panels and implementing control systems, Venkat is the top seed—highly intelligent, a master multitasker, and diabolically independent. His wisdom and prowess over managing projects in retail, media, industrial, business, and health units have proven to be both enviable and formidable. For retail compliance measurement studies, Venkat is the ultimate gatekeeper, the seer, the changemaker.

Prajika Fernando is a unique kind of champion - market research expert, operational manager, and team leader. With over 20 years of professional experience, Prajika structures her life around transforming data into actionable consumer insights. She’s the type of person one draws inspiration from, and has much to give to all that ask. Her proven track record of utilising leadership, cutting-edge research and technology, and building clients across multiple industries (multinational, local, and international) is a benchmark for the global market research industry. Brilliant, unflinchingly analytical, and ready to offer actionable insights to whatever comes her way, Prajika has, over the years, carved a history of delivering winning strategies. Notably, in addition to her involvement with the Chartered Institute of Marketing, UK, she has been an Executive Committee member of the Market Research Society of Sri Lanka from 2015 to 2019 while also serving as Assistant Secretary from 2016 to 2018.

With over a decade of experience in neuroscience across corporate and academia, Dr. Tora Mitra Ganguli has worked in diverse roles ranging from leading FMCG R&D, industry-academic partnerships, neuro-analytics, and strategic consulting with multinational organisations. Tora has a knack for leveraging scientific insights for communication, product innovation, strategic consulting, and building teams. Her strength lies in understanding the customer’s need and providing solutions that help drive their business forward. Along with numerous certifications and awards under her belt, She has experience on the agency side as well as on the client side. She has published several peer reviewed artciels in leading international scientific journals.Tora has led research collaborations between industry and academia and holds a deep interest in mentoring startups in health and technology. A Ph.D in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Massachusetts, Tora knows exactly what to bring to the table.

Nirepinder’s thinking rests solidly on both Mind and Mathematics. Taking learnings from statistics, philosophy, rhetoric, behavioral sciences and evolutionary psychology, he is at home in MR. Nirepinder has made the most of his nearly two decades of industry experience, even synergizing economists, data scientists & researchers to go beyond conventional consumer research. He is an expert at segmentation, opportunity identification, market landscapes, brand, communication, and product research. He is adept at shopping, data science, and secondary data-based insights too. Nirepinder spends his personal time wood working, training in mixed martial arts and reading- anything from Homer to Thaler is welcomed.