This case follows the situation arising from the unprecedented circumstances of COVID-19, which forced the Eastern Mindfulness company to transition the business from physical to virtual interactions. Mr. Alok Taunk had successfully started Eastern Mindfulness, which offered interactive and engaging seminars, online courses, and mobile applications (MindFeed) that addressed holistic wellness, performance, and self-development. However, because of the unprecedented circumstances of COVID-19, Mr. Taunk had to cancel all his bookings and return to the clients any advances.
Based in Boston's Chinatown, the Asian Community Development Corporation's mission was to build affordable homes, empower families, and strengthen communities. The case examines whether ACDC should continue pursuing all three goals or focus on affordable housing.
In early 2022, Courtney McColgan, founder and CEO of Runa, a human resources and payroll Software-as-a-Service platform, faced an unexpected tech market downturn. Founded in 2018, Runa catered to small and medium-sized businesses in Mexico, offering an affordable and easy-to-use cloud-based solution. McColgan, a serial entrepreneur from Southern California, firmly believed the platform could disrupt Mexico's vast industry, and become a billion-dollar business. After an initial period of rapid growth during its first 18 months of operations, and amidst hiring a new executive team, Runa's growth began to falter as attracting new clients became increasingly hard, and customer acquisition costs increased. In August 2021, Runa raised more funds amidst an unprecedented expansion in venture capital investment in Latin America, and it deployed additional marketing strategies and developed new products to entice customers. However, by early 2022, the venture scenario grew gloomier, and tech companies began to take cautionary measures. How should Runa adapt to a potentially more limited funding scenario and perhaps even less favorable growth prospects in the short run? Would dramatic structural and strategic changes be needed? Or should McColgan consider shutting down her business and create a new venture?
In November 2023, Mark Branson, the head of Germany's Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), reflected on the efficacy of the reforms initiated since the Wirecard scandal. BaFin had been discredited after Wirecard's downfall in 2020. The press had derided it as a "toothless tiger" because of its limited supervisory powers when it came to addressing warning signs of large-scale accounting fraud. Why did BaFin fail to detect the Wirecard scandal? Were the reforms sufficient to prevent another large-scale accounting fraud and to build trust with investors?
Tony Rao, co-founder and director of Thorne Valley Meats (Thorne Valley), must decide whether to continue working with the family-run butcher shop that has been producing his high-quality grass-fed beef jerky, or to move to a new, but untested, facility. The butcher shop has been working with Thorne Valley for years and has produced jerky that is satisfactory, but recently it has been struggling to manage its own growth, employee turnover, and pandemic restrictions. These outside forces are causing a sharp decline in the quality of Thorne Valley’s jerky. The butcher shop has asked Rao if he would be willing to purchase a new piece of equipment on its behalf to help resolve the quality issues. The new processing plant, meanwhile, is located in a long-standing butcher shop recently acquired by entrepreneur Julie Martin. While Martin is passionate and ambitious, it is unclear how successful the new venture will be. She has no entrepreneurial experience and is looking to make significant changes to her product offering.
29Blinco, a Perth, Australia-based marketing consultancy, found early success by specializing in the energy transition sector, supporting resource and engineering companies working toward de-carbonizing industrial practices and enabling a clean energy future. Two years after its inception, annual revenues had grown fast, but 29Blinco had also become a victim of its own success: the business model and principles that differentiated its brand promise seemed to be holding it back from meeting growing demand for its services. The founders and directors at 29Blinco faced critical decisions about whether to compromise on their business model and principles. Could they service more clients and work without undermining what they had built and what they stood for?
In May 2021, a recent MBA graduate and retail investor, read an announcement about Monde Nissin Corporation launching an initial public offering of 3.6 billion shares at ₱13.50 per share. The company expected to raise ₱48.6 billion in the largest common share offering ever in the Philippines, while the country was still in the middle of a COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. However, economic and stock market conditions were expected to improve after the availability of vaccines and anticipated end of the lockdown. The investor planned to run a discounted cash flow valuation and comparable multiples analysis of Monde Nissin Corporation to determine if he should invest in the initial public offering. He also wanted to assess the attractiveness of the food industry and the merits of investing in the company, which was the market leader in all of its product categories.
In 2021, the Irish whiskey segment was the fastest growing whiskey segment in the United States. US-based Brown-Forman Corporation had acquired the Slane brand in 2015 after purchasing all shares in the Slane Castle Irish Whiskey company and agreeing to invest in building a new Irish whiskey distillery and visitor centre on the historic Slane Castle Estate. Slane Distillery filled its first barrel of Irish whiskey in 2018, and the company then quickly began targeting key markets in Europe and North America.<br><br>The challenge now for Brown-Forman in the United States was building the Slane brand from scratch. The company's brand marketing team had to first identify overarching strategies that would accelerate awareness and trial for the Slane Irish Whiskey brand in the United States. Key goals included determining a point of differentiation for the Slane Irish Whiskey brand among the alternatives, and fostering a connection between the Slane Irish Whiskey brand and the North American consumer.
In 2019, the director of the newly minted Digital Services Lab at JOB Co. found himself on the brink of a crucial meeting with the company's chief executive officer. The focal point of their impending discussion rested on the stagnation of progress in the Mentor 2.0 project—an initiative conceived to embody an agile paradigm in digital transformation, championed by an inventive Scrum team. Despite the project's noble intentions, the journey towards agility had proven to be riddled with formidable challenges for the team. The director, acutely aware that the destiny of Mentor 2.0 was intricately intertwined with the prosperity of the Lab, the linchpin of JOB Co.'s digital metamorphosis, grappled with the necessity of explaining the situation accurately. The imminent meeting stood as a decisive moment for him to carefully consider the most effective strategy. He understood that the future path of the Mentor 2.0 project held significant implications for the Lab—a pivotal force guiding JOB Co.'s digital evolution.
In January 2021, an equity analyst in the Student Managed Investment Fund of the Asian Institute of Management was trying to estimate the weighted average cost of capital (WACC) of Aboitiz Power Corporation (AP) based on the capital asset pricing model. The WACC estimate would be part of her discounted cash flow valuation, which would then help her determine whether or not the fund should invest in Aboitiz Power Corporation. AP was a leading power generation and distribution company in the Philippines with ₱81.1 billion in revenues over the nine-month period ended September 2020. The Philippines was in the middle of a lockdown related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and while the stock market was showing signs of recovery, the analyst was worried that record low interest rates might exert unwarranted downward pressure on her WACC estimate and artificially raise her discounted cash flow valuation of AP. The company’s WACC had decreased from 2019 to 2020, reflecting a lower risk-free rate, lower borrowing rate, lower stock price, and resulting weight of equity. The analyst needed to explore potential adjustments to normalize the WACC away from pandemic conditions in order to confirm her recommendation regarding investing in AP stock.
When the new chief executive officer joined MX Player, the video streaming business in India was undergoing a content boom and witnessing many changes due to shifting media consumption patterns and the penetration and exponential growth of Western video streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. The structure of the Indian video-streaming content and consumer market was changing, with global streaming platforms inadvertently segmenting Indian consumers according to which platforms they could afford. Western streaming platforms had thus led to a category of aspirational consumers who desired distinct content but were not yet willing or able to pay for it. MX Player provided a solution to this audience by offering high-quality compressed video content for free. But could it address the needs of a growing number of digital customers and still be successful amidst the formidable competition in the OTT market?
In 2008, Goldwind bought 70 per cent of Vensys’ shares through its German subsidiary to obtain a range of strategic assets, including a professional research and development team and associated design capabilities, intellectual property rights of permanent magnet direct drive (PMDD) technology, and corresponding wind turbine designs. Over the years, the post-merger integration (PMI) process of an emerging market multinational enterprise (EMNE) and a developed country multinational enterprise (DMNE) saw many conflicts. By the end of 2021, the general manager of Goldwind Germany needed to strengthen the integration process between the two companies to facilitate its growth in Europe and elsewhere.
Yasir Qureshi, the proprietor of the Indian cooking gas agency Universal Indane (UI), has asked the company’s operations manager, Shruti Bhargava, to review the financial statement for fiscal year 2021–22 and prepare a report on the functioning of the various divisions. Although both the manager of human resources and the marketing manager had presented their reports, Qureshi wanted Bhargava to holistically audit the current inventory system at UI in terms of customer satisfaction levels and cost perspectives. Qureshi wanted Bhargava to prepare a report based on the representative data available from the company’s headquarters in Jahangirabad. UI’s inventory turnover ratio was reportedly improving, but the increasing inventory costs, year-on-year, seemed to suggest that new standard inventory practices needed to be adopted. The total operational cost for holding the inventory was calculated based on all relevant cost elements, including ordering cost, inventory holding cost, cost of delivery, and material costs. Standard inventory management principles from operations management literature were used for investigating inventory systems in natural business settings.
Breadfast is an online grocery delivery retailer founded by Mostafa Amin, Muhammad Habib, and Abdallah Nofal in Egypt in 2017. The three co-founders are now contemplating international expansion into new markets to further grow their revenues and diversify geographically. They have decided to investigate expanding into nearby Tunisia and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Therefore, they must examine the macroeconomic environment and the food and beverage industry in those two countries to determine if the conditions are favourable to ensure a successful international expansion. In addition to identifying the criteria of attractiveness for each country, the co-founders must select the most appropriate market entry strategy. The online grocery retail market in Tunisia and KSA has been growing as a result of evolving consumer preferences and the COVID-19 pandemic. Both countries have favourable and unfavourable factors. Given the risks and trade-offs in each country, Breadfast must determine which market to enter and which mode of entry will increase its the chance of success.
This case looks at the issues involved in planning the 2022 convocation (graduation) ceremony at the Delhi-based Trident Institute of Management and Entrepreneurial Studies (TIMES). The dean of academics, who was responsible for piloting the convocation, needed to be certain that the ceremony could be completed within a limited time to accommodate the schedule of the chief guest (the leader of a multinational conglomerate). The convocation had two parts: the award of medals and certificates to outstanding students and the conferring of degrees and diplomas on the other graduands. The challenge faced by the dean of academics was determining whether the graduands could walk across the stage, collect their medal and/or certificate, and pose for a photo within the stipulated time. The case looks at the convocation from a process perspective, whereby a mismatch between supply and demand can result in waiting times and may also mean that an inventory is needed. The problem in the case is suitable for analysis using Little's law, which states that the average inventory equals the average flow time multiplied by the average flow rate. This short case is concerned with various process parameters such as bottlenecks, capacity, loading, inventory, flow rate, throughput rate, takt time, and cycle time.