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On December 6, 2023, Shirley Rose, owner of the toy manufacturer Stacked, was reviewing the company’s financial performance for its fourth fiscal year, ending November 30, 2023. Stacked manufactured toy wooden blocks in Stratford, Ontario, Canada. Rose needed to record all necessary accounting transactions for fiscal year (FY) 2023 using the FY 2022 statement of financial position, the FY 2023 list of cash receipts and disbursements, and other related information provided in the exercise.

In March 2023, Daikin India had reached the milestone of US$1 billion in turnover. It aimed to surpass $2 billion in the next three years. It had fared poorly in the Indian market since its entry in 2000, but after joining the company in 2010, Kanwal Jeet Jawa, the first Indian and inpatriate on the Japanese board of directors, had turned around Daikin’s Indian subsidiary. Did Daikin’s decision to make India an export hub and to replicate the Indian model for Africa and the Middle East make sense? What role should India play in Daikin’s response to the “China plus one” strategy? Given that the AC industry grew through incremental innovation, how could Daikin compete with its rivals and grow sustainably in India and other emerging markets?

Bigship Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (Bigship), an Indian courier aggregator start-up, made its mark in the industry as late entrant during the COVID-19 pandemic. In October 2023, the chief executive officer and co-founder was struggled with emerging issues during internal and external crises: The company’s employee attrition rate had reached 100 per cent, customer loyalty was in question, and rising levels of fraud were putting pressure on profitability. To add to these problems, another co-founder had sacked all of the company’s marketing staff due to disciplinary issues. With a plethora of problems, the CEO and her team now had to determine whether to focus first on tackling internal issues or aggressively follow growth volumes. In which direction should they steer the company’s strategy?

The latest offering by Reliance Brands Limited (an undertaking of Reliance India Limited) under the aegis of the Jio brand was Jio World Plaza (JWP), an ultra-luxurious mall with breathtaking architecture and an upscale range of brands and services, signalling that India had arrived on the global luxury market. Providing an eclectic mix of Western and Indian wearable and lifestyle brands, JWP had the potential to transform the luxury sector by the effective usage of brand management strategies. In November 2023, Jio’s management faced the question of whether to shape its brand architecture as either a branded house or a house of brands.

On October 31, 2017, Terry Hay, patriarch of the Hay family and leader of the family business, was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer and given three weeks to live. This grim prognosis placed the Hay family on an unexpected trajectory and forced them to confront Terry’s health crisis while grappling with the impending transition of their family business, Scandinavian Building Services Ltd. (SBS), based in Edmonton. Although the family had already planned for leadership succession, Terry’s sudden illness forced them to accelerate their plans and adapt to unforeseen circumstances. How could the family navigate the leadership transition while responding to the urgency of Terry’s illness? What strategic decisions would they need to make to stay competitive and grow market share? Most importantly, how could they preserve Terry’s legacy and solidify the business’s future across generations?

Why managers can assume making strategic assumptions supports effective decision-making.

Surana & Surana International Attorneys (S&S) is a multispecialty law firm. Since its inception in 1971, it had declined to serve clients who were in the industries of meat, tobacco, alcohol, and gambling (M-TAG). In early March 2023, a large opportunity arose from a world leader in the alcohol business. Sanjay Mehta, Head of Business Development, met Vinod Surana, CEO and Partner at S&S, to convince him about bringing change to its deep-rooted tradition of sticking to no M-TAG. Kartik and Keerti,CEO's two sons would join S&S soon after finishing their legal education. Surana had a dilemma whether to stick to the existing business philosophy of "no M-TAG" clients or be flexible, considering growing competition and the business requirements.

Contrary to the typical practice of cutting operating expenses by compromising on employees’ benefits, the chairman of Zentaku Kogyo Company Ltd. (Zentaku), David Wu Chongrang, aimed to improve the standard of living of his staff by steadily raising their salaries and benefits. In fact, the key performance indicator David had set for himself was to raise his employees’ salaries regularly to a preset target benchmark. Contrary to conventional approaches, over the past sixteen years (2006–2022) David had reduced Zentaku’s revenue by 28 per cent and the number of employees by two-thirds, while raising the annual gross profit per employee to 239 per cent. Zentaku had achieved more with less by transforming itself through the rigorous implementation of lean production, inspired by the famed Toyota Production System, but Zentaku’s future leadership now faced challenges in sustaining the success Zentaku had achieved. Were the management methods adopted in the past applicable to the younger generation of workers? How could the current management pass the enterprise to the younger generation while ensuring employees remained fulfilled in the workplace?

This case study explores the various digital interventions (DIs) used by the Asude Foundation (Asude) in delivering education to students from low socio-economic sections in Aurangabad, India, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the impact on students’ learning outcomes. Asude used an approach of recombining resources and leveraging the available digital and human capabilities, thus it provided a holistic and practical solution to the challenges created by the pandemic coupled with various institutional voids. The case study considers how Asude should plan in 2022 for growth and sustainability.

Nykaa E-Retail Limited (Nykaa) has come a long way since its founding in 2012 by Falguni Nayar in Mumbai, India, establishing itself as a prominent participant in the e-commerce and retail industry. Not only has Nykaa revolutionized the field of online shopping in India for beauty and personal care products, but it has also played an essential role in the development of an ecosystem within that field. Nykaa has curated an offering of assorted beauty products spanning a variety of categories, including make-up, skincare, haircare, bath and body, fragrance, grooming equipment, personal care, and health and wellness. The company offers an enormous selection of over 2,400 legitimate brands. Nykaa has been able to maintain consistent growth because of its unrelenting concentration on the requirements of its customers and its close working relationships with other companies. However, feedback and reviews from customers have indicated a disconnect between client expectations and Nykaa’s performance. An increase in customer complaints, encompassing technical issues and problems related to customer assistance, exchanges, returns, and refunds—essentially, the entire customer experience—is revealing opportunities for improvement. Nykaa’s leadership has expressed concern over the increasing number of incidents of consumer dissatisfaction, an issue that is coming to light amid an increasingly competitive digital landscape.

Aditya Goel, co-founder of Love In Store Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (Love In Store), had had a great run despite the COVID-19 pandemic, which started in 2019. Goel and his technology partner had created Love In Store as an entrepreneurial venture that offered a one-stop solution to fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies in India, the majority of which handled the bulk of their supplies through distributors and wholesalers. Love In Store provided both people and technology (tech) to supervise distribution activities for FMCG companies. After the initial success with FMCG companies, Goel also added a tech solution related to payments made to distributors, which would be based on actual proof of promotions. Love In Store’s application (app)-based technology solution streamlined the previously complex and tedious process of supervising distribution and managing sales territories—which had required distributors’ salespeople to write orders, check inventory of stock-keeping units in various categories, and benchmark competitive campaigns, as well as manage sales promotions and merchandising displays and inform retailers about company schemes and policies. Love In Store’s app enabled its appointed people to take care of this supervision, generate reports, pass on orders to the distributors, and support the distributors. After the company’s initial success, and once its turnover reached ₹10 million, Goel and his co-founder decided to expand their operations. The aftermath of the pandemic dominated Goel’s thinking, and he wondered whether it was a good strategy to keep the business restricted to one domain only. While he needed to manage running the business, he was also contemplating the challenge of expanding into other business areas.

In February 2022, Sudhir Kumar Singh, head of human resources (HR) at Tata Steel Limited (Tata Steel)—one of India’s oldest and largest steel producers—was meeting with the vice president of HR to discuss how a unique pilot project to employ transgender people at the mine could be rolled out across the entire company. The long-term objective of the initiative was to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and contribute toward achieving a 25 percent diverse workforce by 2025. Although the pilot project had been successful, how could the HR team now scale up the transgender initiative across Tata Steel? Singh understood that to overcome these challenges he needed to adopt a multi-stakeholder approach, plan holistically, and integrate all the learnings from the pilot project to create a clear, consistent, and comprehensive plan that could be discussed with the vice president of HR.

MedoPlus is a startup working in the space of rural health care in India. Its pilot is currently running in five districts near Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh. The MedoPlus model connects villagers to the nearest health-care facility through an app mediated by a local villager, the MedoMITR. In only 18 months, the company has managed to reach 200,000 registered customers with 50,000 patients accessing health-care facilities. The management team at MedoPlus are planning for the next growth phase and considering the challenges ahead to obtain Series A funding for the company’s expansion.

The evolution of networks into a cornerstone of decentralized digital enterprises marks a profound shift in the business landscape.

The executive director of Meals on Wheels London (MOWL) was struggling with a lack of volunteers to deliver meals to the not-for-profit organization’s customers. MOWL provided nutritional support for adults with disabilities and older people who required short-term or long-term assistance. Several options were under consideration to mitigate the volunteer issue. These included using new, state-of-the-art computer software to allocate volunteers more efficiently; running a volunteer recruitment campaign; and hiring paid delivery drivers to supplement MOWL’s volunteers. The executive director needed to make a quick decision to present at a fast-approaching board meeting where any necessary funding would need to be approved.

This case describes the origins, design, and operations of a social enterprise that was working on the challenge of making high-skill employment opportunities available to non-speaking people with autism. Key to the organization’s efforts was a unique community model that provided the supports needed to activate the talents of a group of people who had historically been excluded from the labour market. These activities were an important part of the overall evolution of work that was happening in the early twenty-first century due to shifting social, technological, and competitive factors.

In March 2024, the global energy storage market witnessed a landmark event. The Indian public utility Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam Limited was able to lower its rates, or tariffs, for energy storage by 58 per cent, compared to bids submitted in a previously issued government tender. The low tariffs, which were the lowest rate ever reported, would open a floodgate of opportunities for the renewable energy industry. Commercially viable energy storage would encourage investments in inherently intermittent solar and wind generation. It would also offer a new alternative for improving grid availability and reliability. However, a sudden drop of over 50 per cent in tariffs also raised new questions. Was the submitted bid to the government tender feasible? Would these low rates be viable in the short and long term? Would low tariffs continue to attract investment in this sunrise sector, which was seeking significant private-sector investments? Amid these questions, the managing director of Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam Limited had to determine how to proceed.

Spreadsheet to accompany product W38728.

In December 2023, Nippon Steel Corporation, Japan’s largest steel production company, announced plans to acquire United States Steel Corporation (U. S. Steel) for US$14.1 billion. Just four years earlier, the company experienced a ¥430 billion deficit for its 2019 fiscal year. After the appointment of a new president in 2019, however, Nippon Steel successfully achieved a V-shaped recovery, rescuing it from the verge of bankruptcy. Immediately after the recovery, the president was already aiming for further global expansion. The proposed acquisition—the attempt of a Japanese steelmaker to acquire an iconic 123-year-old American steelmaker— drew immediate attention from various US sectors and stirred emotion among key stakeholders. But for Nippon Steel, was now the right time, financially speaking, to invest as much as US$14.1 billion in an acquisition? As domestic demand for steel was decreasing due to Japan’s declining birthrate and aging population, Nippon Steel needed to expand its business operations globally before it was too late.

Satkar Automobiles was a dealer for Hero MotoCorp, located in Chhinwada, a small town in Madhya Pradesh, India. Starting from a humble beginning, the two-wheeler dealership had increased its sales revenue year-over-year—until COVID struck. During the pandemic recovery, Hero MotoCorp’s competitors gained more market share. Amidst a changing market, distribution restrictions, and inventory challenges, the company’s chief marketing officer, a second-generation entrepreneur, was faced with a huge problem: how to regain share in her market and become the number one dealer for Hero MotoCorp in India.