About
About Samiran Sengupta.
I’m an independent researcher based in Kolkata, India. I help Digital PR agencies develop research ideas and turn public data into findings they can explain and use.
Telling a lie with data is easy. So is telling one by mistake. Today anyone can build a chart or a ranking in minutes. The harder questions come after. Is it true? Is it useful to someone? Will it still stand when a journalist checks it?
Those are the questions I help Digital PR teams answer.
How I came to Digital PR
I did not plan to work in Digital PR. In 2025 I saw that an Australian agency was looking for a data person. I applied and was selected. That is where I first learned the term “Digital PR”.
My job was to find stories in public data that the agency could pitch to journalists. After a few projects I noticed something. The work underneath was the same work I had been doing for more than 20 years.
Where my habits come from
For 18 years I managed a water-testing laboratory for public-health programmes in West Bengal. A wrong result there was not a small mistake. It could mean a family kept drinking unsafe water. So I learned to check a number before anyone relies on it.
Alongside the laboratory I started freelance data work. In 2022 I joined the Centre for Political Economy Research & Data in Kolkata as a full-time data analyst. There I designed surveys and learned how much the wording of a question shapes the answer. I also moved the team’s reports from Excel and Stata to Python. Daily output went from two or three reports to eight or ten. That was before AI tools could write the code for you. I still feel good about it.
In those years, I also chose the topics and did the data work for data stories in The Hindu. My co-authors did most of the writing.
Data work is not merely a job for me. Finding what is actually true in the numbers is the part I enjoy most.
Different datasets teach you different things, while the basics stay the same.
How I work
My rules are simple. Check the facts and figures before they are published. Say exactly what the data supports: do not overclaim and do not underclaim either. Write down the method and show the limits. If someone shows me with evidence that I got something wrong, accept it and fix it.
What this means for your team
My clients have included two Digital PR agencies in Australia: StudioHawk and Otto Media Group. Sometimes I start with a client’s business and look for a public question worth answering. Sometimes the idea already exists and my job is to test it before the budget is spent. Either way, you get a finding your team can pitch and a method it can defend.
“Samiran supported our data team on several Digital PR projects. His data for an El Niño summer campaign landed coverage across seven Seven West Media titles, including The West Australian and PerthNow. His work is clean, easy to use and well received by our team and journalists. Very knowledgeable, highly recommend.”
I work from Kolkata and write in English and Bengali. When you email me, you reach me, not a team.
Published data journalism
My co-authored data stories in The Hindu. I chose the topics and did the data work.
Explore the work
- StudioHawk Summer Stuffiness Index: finding and fixing data gaps before a national ranking went public.
- Aquatots drowning study: connecting swimming lessons to a wider water-safety question.
- Independent Steel recycling study: comparing recovery across materials and states.
- Methodology: how I find a data story and check it before it is published.