Actually I heard of Ramesh in 1983. I had done my summer training with IMRB and that time the whole split in IMRB was sort of happening and I remember reading in Business India that this hot shot research person was being hired by IMRB. Then Ramesh came and the first impact that everybody felt with him was the fact that IMRB is bound to become an organisation. The first NRS which was done under Ramesh’s supervision became something really huge and big. The entire industry sat up and took note of the changes made in terms of reporting. That was the huge impact of Ramesh’s coming. I remember going to the IMRB Lyceum. During the day Ramesh was very formal and teaching us technical kind of things and during the night he would let his hair down. He was such good fun.

One of the things that everybody in the group loved to do was to imitate Ramesh. He had this kind of body language, his style of pushing his glasses up... and he enjoyed that too. He used to say such profound things in essentially his own measured style!

Ramesh was head and shoulders above everybody else. There is nobody who has acquired that kind of stature. If one discussed even a research design with Ramesh, he had the ability to either come up with something so simple that we would think, why didn’t we think of this before. Or he would come up with something so amazing that we said, we can never reach this level.

Strong and solid, he was a thinking man. He had an intellectual flexibility. He could re-think. If he had a certain impression of you and you did something which outdid that impression, he had the ability to re-think. He would re-evaluate and re-think. He was not stubborn. He was open. He was willing to listen.

Bindu Sethi
HTA

I knew Ramesh for a very long time, even before he joined IMRB. I was with Levers and Levers you know is terrible with suppliers. And the best relationship Levers had was with Ramesh. Other researchers would, at least privately, explode, but Ramesh was always very polite and very keen to improve the service. We had an understated relationship, but a well-connected one.

Considering I don’t know too many people in Bombay today, Ramesh went out of his way to help me and not only because we knew each other and were good friends but because it was the way he was. His approach was ‘let me tr y and see what I can do for you’. He would go out of his way. So many others would say, “I will have someone call you and help you...” The difference is small but very telling.

He was a good, intelligent man who applied himself and he was honest. Research should be honest. He stood for personal and professional integrity. It’s not often that that happens.

Shunu Sen
Quadra Advisory

I first got to know Ramesh in December 1976, when he had just come back from USA, and at that time, I remember his business target used to be Rs. 6 lakh, going up later to Rs. 14 lakh. We often teased him about this later.

When the IMRB opening came up, it was clearly the right move for Ramesh to make. He thrived on that larger canvas, took a broken organisation and took it from strength to strength.

I remember I was in a competing organisation in the mid 80s and Ramesh was head of IMRB and I needed clarification on a certain statistical test. The only person I wanted to call and felt comfortable about calling at that stage was Ramesh. Over the phone, he explained the entire technique to me patiently and in detail, step by step; he did not hold back. I would not have had that sense of comfort with anyone else.

Ramesh was instrumental in making sure MRSI took shape; he ensured that people stayed together and stayed involved long enough to allow the society to take shape. He had the perseverance to ensure that the group stuck together – going to great trouble and detail to make sure the SEC study was correctly done.

In fact, whenever there has been a quantum jump in the depth of MR quality in India, Ramesh has been there. He has driven many initiatives that have improved the quality and depth of the MR business. When I think of Ramesh, I think of work that had depth and painstaking detail, new ideas that were drilled down to the deepest levels they could go to. That was Ramesh.

Rama Bijapurkar
Consultant