The Media Research Users Council India (MRUCI) has appointed Kaacon Sethi as its new Chief Executive Officer, effective October 8, 2026. The move fills a leadership position that had been vacant for close to six years and comes ahead of the planned revival of the Indian Readership Survey (IRS).
A career built across media and marketing
Sethi brings more than 35 years of leadership experience across media, entertainment, sports, content and marketing. She began in media planning and buying with leading agencies before moving to Sony Entertainment Television, where she headed marketing and sales for SET and launched Sony MAX as business head with profit-and-loss responsibility.
Her executive track record includes serving as CEO of K Sera Sera Productions, leading branded content solutions at Lintas Media Group, and spending more than a decade as Chief Corporate Marketing Officer at the Dainik Bhaskar Group. There she led corporate brand strategy, marketing and revenue growth, and advocated for the potential of non-metro markets. She later served as client lead for the Kantar–Dainik Bhaskar Urban Bharat initiative and Report.
Why the IRS relaunch matters
For publishers, media agencies and advertisers, a readership survey is planning currency. The IRS has long been one of the reference points for evaluating publications and allocating budgets. A credible reset can help media planners compare audiences and justify where money moves across print, digital and broadcast.
According to MRUCI, the revived IRS will carry an enhanced study design, refined methodology and a new framework for measuring media quality and impact. That signals ambition beyond a headcount: the next survey will need to show not just how many people read or consume a brand, but how that exposure connects to quality and outcomes.
The leadership task
MRUCI Chairman Vikram Sakhuja framed the appointment as a moment for change. “I am very excited to have Kaacon lead MRUCI at a stage where Audience Measurement not only needs credibility, it also needs reimagination,” he said.
Sethi struck a collaborative note: “Audience measurement has an important role to play in helping the media industry understand changing media consumption behaviour that help make more informed decisions.”
What to watch next
- Methodology: How the IRS samples households, treats digital overlap and measures quality will decide whether agencies trust the data.
- Rollout: Stakeholders will look for a clear timeline from study design to first release.
- Adoption: The real test is whether major media agencies and publishers actually plan on the new currency.
For marketing teams, the practical move is to treat the new IRS as one planning input, benchmark it against other audience sources, and keep internal teams aligned before the first numbers land. That may mean holding off on locking media plans against outdated assumptions until the new methodology is clear.
Source: MediaNews4U
