MRSI set up a Freelance Interviewers’ Relief Fund to help freelance workers in the country’s market research industry, with most data collection in the country carried out through face-to-face interviewing.

The Covid-19 lockdown in March meant freelance interviewers were without work, and MRSI partnered with housing organisation Habitat for Humanity on the relief fund.

To be eligible, freelancers had to have a sustained relation ship with a MRSI member agency and market research had to be their primary source of income.

More than 200 individuals and businesses contributed to the relief fund.

Sandeep Arora, president of the MRSI, said: “We decided that we must do something. We mobilised the Indian market research industry and practitioners past and present, in India and across the globe, to help our community.”