Research firm, the Nielsen Company today said it has launched 'NM Incite' in India, a joint venture with McKinsey & Company that offers solutions to brands based on consumer response on social media.

"Social media is a fast developing platform for consumer opinion and can emerge as an ocean of insight for brands that care to listen. NM Incite aims to help marketers understand this media better and leverage it for growth," Nielsen India President India Piyush Mathur said in a statement.

NM Incite builds upon the industry-leading social media and online brand metrics, consumer insights and real-time market intelligence of 'Nielsen BuzzMetrics' to transform business operations including product development, marketing, communications and customer service.

With the creation of this new venture, BuzzMetrics becomes wholly a part of NM Incite, the statement said.

A study conducted among 800 online consumers in India, revealed that 70 percent of all social networking users access it everyday and only two percent of the people surveyed are not on any social networking sites.

According to the study, Indians have extensively started interacting with brands online. Estimates suggest that only 8 per cent of social media users in India have not read a product review in the last 12 months and 77 per cent have visited a product website after reading a review on a social media site.

"A whopping 4.7 million messages were posted in the last one year across the top 25 Indian forums. One in two people have interacted with a brand on a social networking site in the last one year and 57 percent have reviewed at least one product in the last 12 months," the study said.