Analytical software products maker Cranes Software International has entered into an agreement with broadcasting company CNN-IBN for providing statistical and quantitative analysis on polling trends for the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.
“The deal covers post-election coverage between May 13 and May 17,” Rajeeva Karandikar, executive vice-president at Cranes Software said. Karandikar said that ‘day-after-voting’ polls carried out by the Centre for Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) have covered over 20,000 people across 543 constitutencies in India to gauge the popular mood.
A three-member team from Cranes stationed at the CNN-IBN studios in Noida will work with a 3-member team lead by Kanadikar out of Bangalore to collate and draw inferences from the raw data collected by CSDS. “Besides providing back-end data processing services for on-screen graphics to be aired on CNN-IBN, the Cranes team will also run statistical models on early counting trends and vote share estimates by constituency, party and region. This will help us make early seat projections of the final composition of the house,” Karandikar said.
The Analytics Group at Cranes is using its inhouse statistical software product SYSTAT and its derivatives to run statistical models on early counting trends and make seat projections.
“Converting vote share estimates into seats forecasts continues to be a psephological challenge. The phenomenon of ‘vote swings’ has cleared a new path for psephological studies in India, leading to the socio-economic profiles of voters getting factored in with the raw data while extrapolating on poll outcomes,” Karandikar said.
He said that Cranes has been involved in assimilating, analysing and preparing raw data received from AC Nielsen for use in the graphics that go on air.
The graphics team at CNN-IBN then renders the findings into graphs for telecast on CNN-IBN channel along with IBN7 (Hindi), IBN Lokmat (Marathi), and occasionally on CNBC.
Earlier, Cranes had analysed data collected during the opinion poll commissioned by CNN-IBN in January and February 2009 as a run-up to the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections.
Cranes, which has been primarily focussed on target markets in the pharmaceuticals, environmental science, social science, telecom, and BFSI sectors, has successfully accumulated a portfolio of proprietary products.
Sales revenue in the third quarter ended December 31, 2008 posted modest growth of 6 per cent year-on-year. Net profit after tax was down 15 per cent to Rs 26.73 crore from the same quarter of the previous fiscal.
Revenues for the fourth quarter ending March 31, 2009 are yet to be announced.
Cranes has a global base of over 350,000 users and offers a range of proprietary products including SYSTAT, SigmaPlot, SigmaStat, SigmaScan, TableCurve 2D and Cubeware Cockpit. It has alliances with Microsoft, BusinessObjects, BEA, Borland, Wipro and Craft Silicon, among others.
