Sunil Lulla Replaces Partho Dasgupta as BARC India CEO

Sunil Lulla – a veteran in broadcasting, media and entertainment segments – will be the new chief of BARC, the industry-approved body for measuring TV viewership in India.

Lulla takes over from BARC’s first CEO Partho Dasgupta who decided to move on after serving in the position for over six years.

Lulla, with over three decades of experience, was the group chief executive officer of Balaji Telefilms earlier. Prior to that, he was the chairman and managing director of ad agency Grey Group India. He has closely worked with HMV (Now Saregama), MTV in India, Sony and Times Television Network, among others.

“I am delighted to lead BARC as it grows its footprint, in coverage, scope and services in the fast growing and rapidly evolving TV and digital industry. Things are changing fast and audience measurement has to keep pace with all these. I thank Partho for bringing the company to where it is and wish him a great time ahead,” Lulla said about his new role.

Welcoming Lulla aboard, Punit Goenka, the Chairman BARC India, said, “He has been a board member before and is familiar. Winner of several awards, BARC India is now considered a benchmark by the global measurement community. We wish him the best for his career ahead.”

Arun Iyer, founder and creative partner of Spring Marketing Capital, said Lulla is very fair and straight shooting guy with enough experience in the media world. “He has worked in various positions across media. His world view is great and he will get an interesting perspective to BARC.”

‘Sunil is a great choice. Lots of experience in the media ecosystem.’ D Shivakumar of the Aditya Birla Group said.

BARC India is a joint initiative of broadcasters, advertising agencies and advertisers.

"Sunil is a great choice. I cannot think of a better guy. He has always been innovative and thinks out of the box. He is great with people too," said film director R Balki.

Dasgupta said that it had been a tremendous journey to setup the world’s largest audience measurement company with “the least investment and in the quickest time”. “Having set it up, expanding the panel and introducing new insight products for News, Sports, Music and OOH genres, I thought it’s time to move on and do new things,” he said.