Francis Kanoi has carried out some of the largest and the most widely validated estimation studies conducted in India in the last 20 years.

One of the largest studies being conducted in India is The Market for Durables in India. This study, by Francis Kanoi, covers some 300,000 households and is conducted bi - annually.It provides an analysis of the structure of the market, including its size and the shares of various companies. These estimates are also provided at the level of states and regions within states. Some 35 companies subscribe for this study and every subscriber company verifies these figures against its own sales, putting the study under the kind of objective scrutiny that few other studies go through.

Nearly twenty years of doing this and other such large studies in fields as varied as two-wheelers, trucks and agri-inputs, has produced possibly the most detailed documentation available on how to conduct large estimation studies in a country as diverse as this.

The complexities in conducting estimation studies begin with the sampling itself, as we need to go beyond the accessible and co-operative middle classes, to be representative of the vast populations living in the slums and tenements in the cities, scheduled caste and the scheduled tribe areas in the villages, and the elite, who try so hard to make themselves as inaccessible as possible.

Then there are the incredible cultural sensitivities which lead to drastic variations in measurement with just a change of a word or a phrase or the absence of a preamble explaining the purpose of seeking that information.

A hundred such problems would be listed and solutions incorporated in our studies only to find new ones cropping up the next time around.

Thus, acquiring the expertise to conduct estimation studies in India will never reach its destination, as the country and its people are changing at an incredible pace. However, the width and depth of the work done by us, the intensity of scrutiny and validation against independent data that the findings have always had to go through, and the conscious documentation of the learnings over the years, makes us feel that we have some expertise here.