Associate Vice President

Kantar; Gurugram District; On-site; INR 2,500,000 - 4,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Kantar Gurgaon is seeking an Account Director/Group Account Director to grow client partnerships, manage budgets, and lead cross-functional teams to deliver qualitative insights for FMCG, retail and healthcare clients.

You will drive new business initiatives, nurture client relationships, oversee research processes, and guide teams to deliver compelling, cost-efficient studies while maintaining high standards of quality and thought leadership.

Qualifications

• 8–11 years of qualitative consumer research experience
• FMCG/retail/healthcare sector experience valued
• Proven ability to manage a research team and client relationships
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills
• Cost and time efficiency mindset in project delivery

Responsibilities

• Achieve growth and manage business financials
• Identify new business initiatives across units
• Build and nurture client relationships
• Lead thought leadership and development of research capabilities
• Oversee research executives and ensure quality of outputs
• Manage budgets and monitor cost summaries regularly

Skills

Client management

Team leadership

Budget control

Qualitative research

MR/Marketing research

Communication skills

Networking

Process orientation

Cross-functional collaboration

Job description

Job Description:

We go beyond the obvious, using intelligence, passion and creativity to inspire new thinking and shape the world we live in.

Job Details

Kantar is the world’s leading data, insights, and consulting company; we shape the brands of tomorrow by better understanding people everywhere. Our Insights colleagues are the masters of using data to resolve challenges. They help brands define what they should stand for, how to reinvent and renew their offer, how to better reach audiences, and how to win with consumers and customers. By collecting substantial data from across the world, they blend human expertise with technology, making sure we can deliver innovative insights to brands everywhere.

Qualitative Unit Overview

Kantar Qualitative handles diverse adhoc research requirements of blue chip FMCG, e-Commerce / Tech, Durables, Telecom, Auto clients. As a researcher, you will constantly provide sophisticated solutions to our clients, applying the highest standards of innovative, qualitative market research tools.

Job Title

Account Director/ Group Account Director

Role Overview

• Achieving growth and managing business financials
• Identifying new business initiatives and leveraging skills across units
• Building and nurturing strong client relationships
• Creating an environment that fosters new work / innovations
• Driving thought leadership in teams
• Developing research capability among team members
• Developing processes and process improvements for greater time and cost efficiencies
• Guiding the research executives working on a project to understand exactly what is required of them and training them if necessary. Contribution to the overall training of executives in qualitative research techniques.
• Client management and presentation of company credentials, proposals and research results
• Report writing and presentation creation including client recommendations, with the ability to work independently
• Negotiation of acceptable costs and contract agreements with suppliers.
• Creation of discussion guides and screeners + moderation of groups, interviews, ethnography and online forums
• Overall management of the research team and suppliers.
• Budget control and time spent monitoring job cost summaries regularly.

Role Requirements & Capabilities

• The ideal candidate will be a self-starter who is client focused and comes with proven expertise in MR or Marketing and Branding (with regular interaction and understanding of MR) with a track record of leveraging your knowledge for own business or client benefit.
• Demonstrated ability to get best out of teams, investing in their development and striking the right balance between tasks and relationships
• Process orientation and ability to manage processes for cost and time efficiencies
• Track record of networking skills which you have leveraged for yourself and your organization
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills
• Understanding and leveraging synergies across organizational units for better client delivery
• The position requires an intelligent graduate with 8 – 11years experience of qualitative research, primarily consumer focused; specific experience of the FMCG, retail and healthcare sectors would be an advantage

Why join Kantar?

We shape the brands of tomorrow by better understanding people everywhere. By understanding people, we can understand what drives their decisions, actions, and aspirations on a global scale. And by amplifying our in-depth expertise of human understanding alongside ground-breaking technology, we can help brands find concrete insights that will help them succeed in our fast-paced, ever shifting world.

And because we know people, we like to make sure our own people are being looked after as well. Equality of opportunity for everyone is our highest priority and we support our colleagues to work in a way that supports their health and wellbeing. While we encourage teams to spend part of their working week in the office, we understand no one size fits all; our approach is flexible to ensure everybody feels included, accepted, and that we can win together. We’re dedicated to creating an inclusive culture and value the diversity of our people, clients, suppliers and communities, and we encourage applications from all backgrounds and sections of society. Even if you feel like you’re not an exact match, we’d love to receive your application and talk to you about this job or others at Kantar.

Privacy and Legal Statement

PRIVACY DISCLOSURE: Please note that by applying to this opportunity you consent to the personal data you provide to us to be processed and retained by The Kantar Group Limited ("Kantar"). Your details will be kept on our Internal ATS (Applicant Tracking System) for as long as is necessary for the purposes of recruitment, which may include your details being shared with the hiring manager.

Location

Gurgaon, DLF Cyber ParkIndia

Kantar Rewards Statement

At Kantar we have an integrated way of rewarding our people based around a simple, clear and consistent set of principles. Our approach helps to ensure we are market competitiveand also to support a pay for performance culture, where your reward and career progression opportunities are linked to what you deliver.

We go beyond the obvious, using intelligence, passion and creativity to inspire new thinking and shape the world we live in.

We want to create an equality of opportunity in a fair and supportive working environment where people feel included, accepted and are allowed to flourish in a space where their mental health andwell beingis taken into consideration.

We want to create a more diverse community to expand our talent pool, be locally representative, drive diversity of thinking and better commercial outcomes.

Kantar is the world’s leading data, insights and consulting company. We understand more about how people think, feel, shop, share, vote and view than anyone else. Combining our expertise in human understanding with advanced technologies, Kantar’s 30,000 people help the world’s leading organisations succeed and grow.