“UTSAHA” as the meaning goes in Hindi was started “with a passion” for understanding the consumer behaviour of people in rural India. 70% of the population residing in rural India is still not properly served products by the existing distribution network due to several reasons. We at IIM Indore via our event Utsaha – Rural Marketing Research Festival try to find out, analyse and give solutions to some of these problems of the partner companies. Utsaha started off in 2009 when PGP students of IIM Indore saw an opportunity in the Kartik Poornima Mela of Janapav Kutti as a suitable platform to understand rural consumer behaviour. Utsaha is one of the most awaited events in the b-school calendar with active support and projects from government, corporate houses, institutes and SMEs. The USP of Utsaha is ‘Disguised Market Research’, the respondents don’t know they are being subjected to market research and so all they do is enjoy the fun and fervour around and in the process give valuable, unbiased insights into consumer behaviour.Marketing research in Utsaha happens in three stages:1) Pre Utsaha Fair:Work related to getting projects, finalising research methodology, exploratory research and designing of the questionnaire is done before the Utsaha Marketing Fair. The branding partner for Utsaha 2016 was LIC and project partners included companies like ICICI Bank, Shree Guruji, AdaniWilmar, Idea & Tech Mahindra. The projects included conducting market research for understanding brand perception, building a repositioning strategy, understanding mobile usage behaviour, dependency on the internet etc.This year in addition to this usual work a marketing research workshop was also organised.About Marketing Research Workshop:This year Utsaha Team had invited experts from the industry in order to make students understand about the industry trends of conducting research. The dignitaries invited for conducting the workshop were:1) Mr. Mohan Krishnan (Director, The Peninsula Centre ; Ex VP IMRB)2) Prof. SharadSarin (Researcher and professor a XLRI Jamshedpur)3) Mr. SarojMohanta (Freelance Consultant ; Ex Partner, MART) Mr. Mohan Krishnan gave insights about questionnaire designing, data analysis and report making. Prof. Sharad Sarin who is regarded as the father of disguised marketing research technique shared his experiences about conducting disguised marketing research. Mr. Saroj Mohanta made students aware of the ways to approach rural consumers for collecting information. Students also were being constantly guided and assisted by Prof. Abhishek Mishra , Marketing Dept at IIM Indore.2) Utsaha Fair:Under the dark shades of demonetization the event (research fair) happened successfully this year on 13th and 14th November 2016 at Janapav Kutti village(birth place of Lord Parshurama) on the occasion of Karthik Purnima. Nearly 60,000 people from various villages around Indore visited this mela. Archit Kothari, Bonani Sahu, Kunal Sahi and Shakti Prasad Badajena, Projects Coordinators, Utsaha 2016 said – “This year's event was like a hypotheses test for us with hypotheses of whether people will come for the mela or not and null hypothesis being that not many people will come due to unavailability of cash for transactions. But we were delighted that our null hypothesis was wrong and we got a lot of participation for the mela. In fact, the crowd at stalls was uncontrollable.”Each project from partner companies was set up in a different stall with unique fun activities and games to capture customer behaviour. In an attempt to attract crowds, loud music blared from speakers. Children thronged to play games and win freebies while adults slowly but steadily ambled in. “Curiosity is part of human nature and this helps Utsaha generate crowd interest in their stalls, games and questionnaires.”Stalls were decorated with streamers, posters of Bollywood stars, catchy slogans about the product and game, and the products themselves.Research questions were converted into important variables, which were quantified in questionnaires and gamified to help the audience engage with the product or key variables in question.IIM Indore students manned the stalls and helped generate interest in the games. Fun and freebies were part of the package and were well received by the crowds.3) Post Utsaha Fair:The complete data collected from primary research at the Utsaha Fair is collated and analysed. The work for same is going on in full swing and final reports will be submitted to the companies in the due course of time.Other than this Marketing Research activity some of the students from Utsaha team under the name “Ummeed” are involved in helping people in and around Janapav Kutti village. Kapil Yadav& Monika Pindiga, Ummeed Coordinators, say “We believe in contribution to the society in every action we take. Utsaha has addressed contribution to the society in a unique way by conducting career sessions for students, guiding unemployed people about business opportunities and by conducting curiosity generating sessions about drones among children.”At last Rohan Sontakke, Overall Coordinator, Utsaha 2016 said that “Utsahatries to fulfil all its objective of contributing to welfare of all its stakeholders by providing reports to companies, learning’s to students and social welfare of respondents in and around Janapav Kutti village”. He also mentioned that “Utsaha 2016 was a great learning experience for the complete team about making the event successful in the times of crisis (Due to demonetization).”