TNS India splits; as many as 80 people quit to form Mode Modellers

As many as 80 executives of TNS India have put in their papers over the last few months. The enormity of the incident does not lie in the numbers, but in the fact that a majority of these people had been working in the company for more than a decade or even longer.

The list includes top management, research heads and also field researchers.

Sources, familiar with the goings on at TNS, said that the large scale resignations were a direct result of different management principles between the old guard and the new top brass. There was also a certain "clash" in ideologies and cultures.

The new management was a consequence of TNS buying out the original Indian promoters, and its recent acquisiton of US-based company, NFO.

The split, in a way, has its genesis in the way TNS India has come to exist.

TNS' story in India goes way back to 1981. The company, then known as Mode Services, was set up in Kolkata. In 1997, French agency Sofres made an investment into Mode; the company soon changed its name to Sofres-Mode.

In the very next year, Sofres was bought over by UK-based international agency, Taylor Nelson AGB. Sofres-Mode subsequently became TNS-Mode (Taylor-Nelson-Sofres-Mode) in 2000.

Mode's tryst with merger-acquisitions did not end here. In 2003, when globocorp TNS bought over US-based NFO for a greater push to its American operations, the company also bought a 100 per cent stake in the Indian operations. This was how TNS India was formed.

Sources say the last merger has not gone down well in India. "There were inherent differences in the way of functioning between the erstwhile Mode employees and the new executives brought in by TNS-NFO," an industry source disclosed.

"Mode was basically an agency of hands-on researchers where a research manager would have years of experience in that field. The new managers of TNS-NFO, on the other hand, treated research as a business proposition. Mode, under the new management, was no longer a 'people's company' that it once used to be. Employees, who had been working for Mode for all these years, suddenly felt out of place in the new scheme of things," another source added.

The sources declined to be identified owing to the sensitivity of the developments.

It was learnt that the former Mode employees have formed a new market research company called Mode Modeller with Kalyanmoy Chatterjee, one of the old Mode hands, as the CEO. It is believed that two more companies are being set up.

Attempts to contact Chatterjee proved futile, but sources say that the company is already in talks with prospective clients.

TNS India managing director Jenny Abraham said TNS India has benefitted tremendously by the synergies got out of India's two large agencies and with the current combined size of the company's operations. "We have actually been performing even better this year, with both clients and employees benefiting from this," she wrote in an e-mail.

Commenting on the mass resignations, she said, "In any such process involving two companies in identical businesses, as in Mode and NFO, there will be some duplication particularly in the support functions and apart from this, there will be some people who may not be in line with the new vision. This results in some resignations from employees affected by the situation. Personnel choosing to take up alternate work opportunities is a normal result of most synergies and this was seen in our case too."

In TNS India's case, resignations were primarily limited to support functions. In fact, barring the two joint MDs of erstwhile Mode, there have not been any resignations at the top level, she added. "In our case, senior members have found more challenging roles in the new structure and have become even more committed to the organisation." © 2004 agencyfaqs!