@anandmahindra, among ‘most influential'

Imagine who in India has one of the “most influential Twitter accounts” today? Mr Anand Mahindra, Vice-Chairman and MD of Mahindra & Mahindra. A three-month study by Burson-Marsteller and klout.com says so.

Burson-Marsteller has released a list of the 10 most “influential” voices on Twitter in India. This list is part of a research study “G-20 Influencers” that named the 200 most influential political voices on social media, mainly Twitter, across 26 countries, including G-20 nations.

Burson-Marsteller's public affairs and digital consultants drew up a list of 900 ‘influencers'. The social media analytics company

klout.com then assessed them against its influence metric, on a 1-100 scale, measuring ‘influence' based on a user's ability to drive action. Other Indians who figure on the list are Kiran Bedi, Narendra Modi, Derek O'Brien, Vir Sanghvi, Jonathan Shainin, Digvijay Singh, Subramanian Swamy, Sushma Swaraj and Shashi Tharoor. The study found in March that, over a 90-day span, these opinion influencers received an average of 28,110 re-tweets, an average of 24,600 mentions and had an average of 3,37,964 Twitter followers.

According to Mr Rahul Sharma, President of Genesis Burson-Marsteller's Public Affairs practice: “The G-20 study is representative of how social media is an increasingly trusted and utilised platform for shaping public opinion here in India and around the world”.

On an average Mr Mahindra tweets or re-tweets four-five times a day, from anywhere in the world. On April 13, he tweeted: “Shocking revision of the January Index of Industrial Production from 6.8% to 1.1%” @anandmahindra, eliciting several responses.

> Jayanta_mallick@thehindu.co.in