Your India Intelligence Partner

Making Sense of India and Indians
For You to Act On.

Fractional Consumer Insight and Brand Strategy Team

Where the intelligence comes from

RURAL BIHARURBAN PUNEHYDERABAD CBDCALCUTTARAE BARELIHISARPUNJABTELANGANAALL 294 SEATS IN WEST BENGALKERALATAMIL NADUASSAMTELUGU HOUSEHOLDS IN THE UNITED STATES33 CITIES9 STATES16 SIMULTANEOUS FIELD LOCATIONSEVERY SOCIO-CULTURAL REGION OF INDIA
SIKH COMMUNITIES IN PUNJABMADIGA COMMUNITIES IN TELANGANAJATAV IN RAE BARELIJATAV IN HISAR13 SCHEDULED CASTE COMMUNITIES ACROSS 9 STATESMARWARI FAMILIES BUYING GOLDTELUGU NRIs IN THE UNITED STATESHOUSEHOLDS EARNING ₹10,000 A MONTHBUYERS MAKING ₹3 CRORE DECISIONSSALARIED PROFESSIONALS AND BUSINESS OWNERSMOTHERS-IN-LAW WITH VETO AUTHORITYTHE LOCAL BANK MANAGERFIRST-GENERATION GLOBAL KIDSPRAGMATIC PARENTSGUARDIAN GRANDPARENTSTHE ASPIRATIONAL YOUNGSTERTHE RATIONAL MALETHE WISE OLD MANTHE ROOTED WOMANFIRST-TIME VOTERS OF 2029
2.22 LAKH TELEPHONIC INTERVIEWS294 CONSTITUENCIES IN 16 DAYS2,000 CONCURRENT CALLING LINES~750 INTERVIEWS PER SEAT248 OF 294 SEATS CALLED CORRECTLY84.35% ACCURACY426 FOCUS GROUP RESPONDENTS320 QUALITATIVE DEEP DIVES614 HIGH-INTENT PROPERTY BUYERS10 HOUSEHOLD IMMERSIONS15 REMOTE DEPTH INTERVIEWS5 ERAS OF MONEY4 REGISTERS OF BORROWING7 WAYS OF RELATING TO JEWELLERY8 DEVICES IN MASS RETAIL COMMUNICATION6 MASS-VERSUS-BOUTIQUE OPPOSITIONS4 COSTED STRATEGIC ROUTES11 POLICY RECOMMENDATIONSA ₹500 CRORE PRODUCT-PRICE DECISION
Who we are

We are India Romantics.
Academically, Professionally, Passionately.

We specialise in making sense of India and Indians, understanding the nation, the society and the consumer. We apply that to any business, brand or institution whose strategy carries an India understanding deficit.

Glimpses from our time on project

Fruit vendors behind a stacked display, a payments QR code on the counter
Field visitA QR code at the till and a hand-stacked pyramid behind it. Both are doing the same job.
A boatman rowing on the Ganga at first light
Field visitThe Ganga at first light. A wristwatch, a tilak, and an oar.
A vendor seated with baskets of lemons beside a painted wall
Field visitLemons, peas, and a painted Ram on the wall behind. Rent-free brand association.
A cook spreading two dosas on a griddle
Field visitTwo dosas on one griddle. The entire business fits inside this room.
A woman selling marigold and betel leaf at a roadside stall
Field visitMarigold and betel leaf, sold by the handful.
A woman seated by the window of a long-distance train coach
Field visitA long-distance coach, mid-morning. Most of India moves like this.
Two traders in a wholesale steel utensils shop, both looking at phones
Field visitSteel stacked to the ceiling, and both men are looking at a phone.
A girl holding a puppy on the steps of a neighbourhood lane
Field visitA lane, a puppy, and no interest whatsoever in the camera.
A worker riding the tailgate of a truck through a tea estate in the rain
Field visitRiding the tailgate through a tea estate, in the rain.
How we work

A fractional team of experts.

Fractional has become a euphemism. Most of what is sold as a fractional function is one person working alone, renting hours between other clients. No second opinion, no field network, nobody to check the analysis.

We are a fractional team of experts. Four defined functions, staffed and already working together: strategy, research design, field intelligence and fieldwork operations. You plug us into your organisation and we become your India intelligence function. No hiring, no onboarding, no six-month ramp-up.

Service line 01

Fractional Consumer Insight Team

For when you need to know what Indians actually think, do and pay. We design the instrument, run the fieldwork and own the analysis, then bring you a recommendation you can act on rather than a deck you have to interpret.

  • Qualitative immersion and community deep dives
  • Conjoint, pricing and willingness-to-pay studies
  • Large-scale telephonic and AI-led fieldwork
  • Shopper, buyer and household behaviour

Service line 02

Fractional Brand Strategy Team

For when consumer truth has to become a brand. Cultural and semiotic decoding of the category first, then the foundations built on top of it, costed and scored against what your organisation can actually execute.

  • Cultural and semiotic category decode
  • Competitor code audits and white space
  • Brand foundations, architecture and territories
  • Naming briefs and go-to-market playbooks

Our edge

We hold the operational infrastructure built for the brutal demands of political consulting: fieldwork across 16 locations simultaneously, reaching communities standard panels cannot, in languages that ensure honest answers. Politics is not a separate business. It is the hardest available test of the same method.

Accountability

We do not disappear after delivering the deck. We sit at the table when the decision is made, and our institutional memory of your market compounds with every project.

Engagement models

Project basis for a defined strategic question, research design through final recommendation. Retained partnership for an ongoing intelligence function on quarterly strategy cycles.

Who you'll work with →

Selected work

Intelligence that became decisions.

Seven engagements where consumer intelligence was translated into a high-stakes call. Each is available as the full method write-up.

Brand strategy · Cultural analysis · September 2024

Strategy for a generational jeweller

A four-generation family house was losing ground to organised chains spending 4 to 5% of revenue on marketing alone. We read what jewellery actually means in India, from the Samudra Manthan to the shringara that brings a murti to life, and set it against the codes the category advertises with. The client's cultural capital turned out to be innate, resilient and essentially free to leverage.

7Ways of relating to jewellery
8Devices in category communication
4Costed strategic routes
↓ Download the case study

Brand strategy · Socio-cultural analysis · 2024

Reading money in India for a fintech brand

A digital-first buy-now-pay-later product had mass awareness and no depth of use. Every competitor was pulling the same levers: more rewards, higher limits, longer windows. We went underneath, decoding five eras of money and four registers of borrowing, and found a category speaking entirely in settlement mechanics. Nobody had an emotional moat because nobody had language outside the repayment schedule.

5Eras of money decoded
4Registers of borrowing
2Brand territories built out
↓ Download the case study

Real estate · Pricing science · February to March 2026

Premium residential pricing and positioning

A premium gated high-rise in central Hyderabad with no local comparable, so every decision needed evidence. Ten in-home immersions found what families actually argue about, and only those variables were tested against a hard price tag with 614 budget-vetted buyers. Price came third. The gated format itself drove 6 to 12%, because buyers at this level treat the gate as a baseline right.

614Budget-vetted buyers
10In-home immersions
4Buyer playbooks
↓ Download the case study

Consumer intelligence · Qualitative research · May to June 2026

The Telugu NRI property buyer

Immigration policy, AI pressure on IT careers and a surging India growth narrative were hitting the Telugu diaspora at once. Fifteen conversations across the United States surfaced the divergence that mattered: the people making the most noise were not the people buying. Screened rigorously for in-market buyers, a different demographic appeared. Settled, unhurried, driven by planned life phases rather than visa anxiety.

15Depth interviews across the US
2Phases, different sampling logic
4Obstacles between interest and purchase
↓ Download the case study

Political strategy · Socio-cultural research · May to July 2025

The first-time voter study

Roughly a hundred million Indians cast a first national vote in 2029, and they have no electoral record to model. Run a full year before Gen Z protests dominated the news cycle, this mapped the cohort whole across 33 cities, from Jhansi and Cuttack to Mumbai. The finding that reframed the media plan was a three-step trust pipeline, where Instagram carries enormous affinity and almost no credibility.

426Respondents aged 15 to 20
33Cities, metro to Tier 2
3Step media trust pipeline
↓ Download the case study

Political strategy · Community intelligence · January to February 2024

Scheduled Caste perception study

Indian strategy has long treated the Scheduled Caste vote as a single bloc, read through aggregate polling. We went to the margins instead: shanties along railway tracks, settlements on the edges of villages, sixteen locations across nine states. Each of the thirteen communities was a universe with its own grievances and its own local heroes. Scheduled Caste is an administrative category, not a voting bloc.

320Respondents, focus-group led
13Distinct communities
9States, 16 locations
↓ Download the case study

Electoral research · AI-led data collection · April 2026

Voice agents at state scale

Reaching all 294 West Bengal constituencies inside a campaign window normally forces researchers onto modelled estimates for most of the state. We removed the constraint. AI voice agents ran up to 2,000 simultaneous lines for sixteen days, with a human-interviewed subset running alongside throughout to calibrate selection effects. Every seat measured directly, none extrapolated from its neighbours.

2.22LValid responses collected
294Constituencies in 16 days
84.35%Of seats called correctly
↓ Download the case study

Every download is the full five-page method write-up. The framework behind the study, the analytical moves that produced the finding, and what the client did next.

We ask for a name and a work email. Nothing else, and no mailing list.

Team

Who you actually work with.

Four defined functions, staffed and already working together. No account layer, no junior handoff. The people who design the research are the people in the room when the decision is made.

Ayan Bairoliya

Founder & Head of Strategy

Frames the strategic question, owns the analytical approach, and sits with the client when the decision is made.

Sourabh Subramaniam

Lead, Research Design and Analysis

Designs the instrument, sets the sampling logic, and owns the analysis from raw transcript to recommendation.

Janak Pandya

Lead, Field and Ground Intelligence

Builds the field network, reaches communities standard panels cannot, and reads what the ground is actually saying.

Manoj

Manager, Fieldwork

Runs fieldwork on the ground: moderator recruitment, scheduling across simultaneous locations, and quality control on every interview.

Full profiles →

Contact

If your next decision needs Indian consumer intelligence behind it, we should be in a room together.

Email ayan@plusnineoneinsight.com Phone +91 81289 53773 Offices Bengaluru  ·  Kolkata