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Supplement to case W20218

Supplement to case W20218

Supplement to case W20218

Avni Patel Thompson, founder and CEO of Poppy, an online marketplace for on-demand childcare, revisits the venture's final months, and discusses the steps she took in the wake of the shutdown. This case explores experiments the company conducted to refine its original business model, as well as how Patel Thompson rekindled her entrepreneurial ambitions. It is part two of an A and B case, the A case being: Poppy: A Modern Village for Childcare Case 818 075, November 2017.

Hotstar was an online video streaming platform owned by Star India Private Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Walt Disney Corporation. Since its launch in 2015, the platform had grown to offer over 100,000 hours of TV content, movies in nine Indian languages and live coverage of popular sporting events to its 300 million viewers. Although most of Hotstar's content was offered as a free advertisement-based service, users could access exclusive movies and TV shows by paying for a monthly or annual subscription plan. Hotstar's appealing content and high-quality technology made it one of the most popular video streaming apps but it now faced increasing competition from both domestic and foreign players. The company also had to accelerate the conversion of customers who used the free advertising-based streaming service to a subscription based streaming service. At the same time, there was a need to create more unique content leveraging its digital platform, as opposed to repurposing the content created for broadcast TV for digital streaming. Given all these challenges, the company's CEO Uday Shankar wondered, how should Hotstar evolve in order for it to become a profitable and sustainable business in the next few years?

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has emerged as an important area of corporate attention in an informationally integrated world. Corporates are realizing that how they are perceived by the larger society, has a bearing on their capacity to function effectively and create shareholder value. The task of developing and implementing the CSR strategy for Torrent Group was entrusted to Markand Bhatt, a veteran executive in the group. Documenting the challenges faced by Bhatt and the decisions he was required to make the case details the context for an in-depth discussion on the process of design and execution of CSR strategy.

The case recounts a significant attempt at social transformation through a simple mechanism of providing cooking gas to the marginalised in society. Targeting about 80 million BPL (below the poverty line) households in India that still used dung cakes, firewood, and coal as the primary fuel for cooking, the government conceived the Ujjwala scheme to replace these traditional fuels with liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), a clean fuel. The scheme had the potential to achieve major social transformation through women empowerment. The women would have more time to engage in economic activities and improve the health of households. This scheme would particularly improve the health of women who were directly affected by the polluting fuels. Launched on May 1, 2016, the scheme was very successful in terms of the number of households covered, as the target group across the country enthusiastically embraced it. By January 2018, the scheme had already covered over 30 million families. While reviewing the scheme's progress, the Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas-responsible for its execution-realised that several key decisions regarding Ujjwala would require careful resolution to ensure that the social benefits from the scheme were sustained.

The case describes the structure of one of the earliest infrastructure investment trusts (InvITs) created and launched in Indian markets in 2017. IndiGrid was an InvIT created by Sterlite Power Grid Ventures Limited (SPGVL), the Sponsor. As a developer, SPGVL had been in the business of constructing and making available transmission links and assets to the grid operator on the basis of competitively bid annuity-like payments over 25 to 35 years. IndiGrid, an InvIT, acquired the transmission assets of the Sponsor to enable wider participation of investors. As the case illustrates, InvITs were allowed to act as pass-through vehicles for tax purposes in order to facilitate investors' direct participation in financing private-sector infrastructure investments. Historically, most investments made by private players in the infrastructure sectors in India relied on bank debt and risk capital brought by the developers or mobilised via equity markets.

"Intrapreneurship" is the use of entrepreneurial management techniques within established companies to create new environments that foster innovation. Mature firms have consistently faced risk of elimination from competitors, shifting consumer preferences, and disruptive innovations. That threat has intensified enormously over the past several decades with the emergence of new technologies with sweeping relevance to business practices, increasing the pressure to innovate or perish. Entrepreneurial managers in charge of innovation must ask themselves: What are you trying to achieve? Is your company confronting a specific strategic challenge? Is innovation core to your firm's mission? Or do you simply want the firm to be open to new ideas and be more innovative? How integrated with the company do you want the innovation effort to be? In this note, we focus on the innovations that are core to the firm and pose real threats to its future, and provide a framework for how to structure innovation efforts in more traditional organizations.

Founded in 1899 by Shinjiro Torii in Osaka, Japan, Suntory Holdings (Suntory) boasted a rich history in Japan's alcoholic beverage industry. It purchased US-based Beam in 2014 for $16 billion, renamed itself as Beam Suntory, and transformed into one of the world's largest alcoholic beverage makers, reaching total global revenues of more than 2.5 trillion yen ($23 billion) by the end of fiscal year 2018. Now, in 2020, could the Suntory team pull off a third miracle and successfully bring Japan's highball culture to the extremely competitive global marketplace?

In 2018, the owner of Blue Sky Ranch, a heritage pig farm in British Columbia, Canada, was reviewing her business options. She had been producing premium-priced, high-quality pork for two years; however, despite growing demand from restaurants, grocers, and consumers for high-end, sustainably raised, free-range meat, Blue Sky Ranch was not yet profitable. The owner faced several challenges in processing and delivering her product to clients, and faced competition from large meat producers who had stronger relationships within the food supply chain. The business was operating at a loss and was continually constrained by federal and provincial regulations. What options were available to ensure the future of her business?

This case captures the problems concerning cash flow and working-capital management typical of small, growing businesses. At the end of 2020, Roger and Christine Barton have completed their third year of operating Nelson Nurseries, a $1-million-revenue woody-shrub nursery in central Virginia. While experiencing booming demand and improving margins, the Bartons are puzzled by their plummeting cash balance. The case highlights the difference between cash flow and accounting profits, as well as the common negative effects of growth on cash flow. It also provides a forum for instilling appreciation for the relevance of free cash flow to business owners and managers, introducing financial-ratio analysis, developing the concepts of the cash cycle and working-capital management, and motivating the use of financial models.

Spreadsheet supplement for case UV8024.

When businesses deliver a product or service, they often forego receiving immediate cash payment and allow their customers to pay later. Such payment terms are called trade credit. While trade credit fosters sales to existing and new customers, such credit is not free. The cost of trade credit to sellers is twofold: it creates repayment uncertainty and it increases the seller's financing cost. By extending trade credit, sellers effectively take on a banking role as they finance a portion of their customers' assets. This note explores and illustrates the trade-offs that businesses make regarding trade credit.

The well-known net present value (NPV) rule advocates accepting all investment projects that have a positive NPV. The NPV rule makes economic sense since positive-NPV projects are expected to create economic value. But what should a manager do if the total investment capital needed to fund the available positive-NPV projects exceeds the budgeted capital available? This note illustrates and discusses the profitability index, one tool that is used to assist managers in such constrained situations.

In 2012, Reshma Saujani founded Girls Who Code (GWC) with the mission of closing the technology (tech) industry's gender gap. While GWC offered coding education programs to middle- and high-school-aged girls, the organization also sought to alter cultural stereotypes surrounding women in tech through books, advertisements, and social media campaigns. Saujani remained active in promoting her organization's message through a TED Talk, a best-selling book, and frequent media appearances and interviews. By 2019, GWC had served approximately 185,000 girls, expanded its programs to all 50 U.S. states, and reached hundreds of millions of individuals through its advertising and media campaigns. However, the tech gender gap was still significant. Saujani claimed that the organization was on track to close the gender gap among entry level tech roles by 2027. Would GWC reach its goal? If not, were there new initiatives that it should consider to increase its effectiveness?

Spreadsheet supplement to case HK1207

Spreadsheet supplement to case HK1207