Soniya Gupta-Rawal

Soniya Gupta-Rawal is a PhD candidate in Management Studies (Marketing) at Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, supervised by Professor Jaideep Prabhu. She is a quantitative marketing researcher studying markets and firms often overlooked in mainstream research: micro-entrepreneurs, women-led businesses, and informal-sector businesses in emerging markets. Her doctoral work examines how small-scale entrepreneurs make marketing decisions when resources, information, and institutional support are limited. Working across India, Indonesia, and Sub-Saharan Africa, she studies high-impact questions in digital adoption, women’s entrepreneurship, unorganised retail, and frugal innovation. Her goal is to generate evidence that supports better decisions across the ecosystem, from entrepreneurs and low-income consumers to governments and organisations designing market-support policies. Soniya combines careful measurement with grounded field insight. She uses field experiments, AI-enabled tools, and economic analysis to identify what works in dynamic, unorganised markets, and why. Her research asks applied questions with theoretical leverage: which marketing approaches improve business growth; what drives performance and resilience in unorganised retail; and how digital tools can help build more sustainable and inclusive markets. Her work translates rigorous field evidence into insights that practitioners can use, and researchers can build on. She holds an MPhil in Strategy, Marketing, and Operations from the University of Cambridge (Commonwealth Scholar, 2021-22). Her research was recognised with the Tony Cowling Foundation Research Grant (2022-26).