, 48, is unlikely to forget him in a hurry. The brand expert who was Dainik Jagran's national brand head until about a fortnight ago, is ever ready to help marketing managers and journalists running around in search of data and perspective on the media and advertising industry. Raghunath, who joined Jagran barely a year ago, was earlier an independent consultant advising the group on building the Dainik Jagran brand.
Now, the media expert has decided to return to consultancy and is already in business advising three regional language publications -- the Jhawar group promoted Jharkhand daily Prabhat Khabar, A J Radhakrishnan group's Andhra Jyoti and Diamond Magazine's publications such as Grihalakshmi, Cricket Today and Sadhana Path.
Raghunath plans to continue teaching at the Jagran Institute of Management and Mass Communication (JIMMC). His association with Jagran can be traced back to 1997 when he was part of the core committee of the paper's national marketing team.
With his ear to the ground and hands-on approach to understanding readers, he pushed for innovations such as the short code mobile service and pathak manchs and road shows.
However, for the new role, Raghunath claims he will have to fall back on his Andhra roots and his upbringing in Bihar and Jharkhand besides his skills at readership management.
But eventually the man, who loves crunching data on his laptop, wants to settle down in Ahmedabad. "I'll live in Ahmedabad and will go back to teaching at the Mudra Institute of Communication (MICA) where I've been teaching since 1994," he says.
It is no surprise, then, that the man who understands the country's media markets better than most, can speak Bhojpuri, Gujarati, Tamil, Telgu as well as Hindi and English.
Always on the move, Raghunath confesses it's his pendrive containing Kishore Kumar and Talat Mehmood songs which keeps him going.
