According to Ashish Bhasin, president, Initiative Media (the media-buying division of Lintas), the upgraded version is more user-friendly and moves from one module to another much faster.

Providing access to information on 31 states, 452 districts and 6.25 lakh villages in the country at a click of a mouse, the package is a vital tool for rural marketers, advertising and media professionals, mainly in the FMCG industry.

Linquest analyses all authentic published data, mainly sourced from the census, RBI, CMIE (Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy), Statistical Outline of India Tata Services and the Lintas rural package developed in the late 1980s, at the district level and lists them on 32 parameters like demographic, literacy, agricultural, civicamenities and income groups.

This package allows the marketer to choose the parameters relevant to a specific brand and assign weightages to it. On the basis of the chosen weightages, it ranks the districts across the country. In-built statistical validation ensures that related parameters are not chosen.

Options can be viewed at all-India level to identify the most valuable district across the country or at state level - to get rankings of districts in a chosen state and district level-ranking of a select district.

In addition to ranking, national and state indices are computed to give a district's potential at national and state levels. Linquest also provides urban and composite (rural and urban) data at the press of a button.

A master copy of the package costs Rs 75,000 for Lintas clients, Rs 99,000 for non-Lintas clients for a master copy and Rs 10,000 for each additional copy on CD Rom.

About 60 to 70 per cent of the 50 master copies sold have been purchased by Lintas clients. However, Bhasinclarifies, ``We are not limiting this to only Lintas clients because we want to make Linquest a common currency in the industry.''