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On January 2, 2018, the chief executive officer of a private company in Karachi, Pakistan, Imaam Spinning Mills (Imaam), was planning to expand the company’s product line and enter the weaving business by setting up a new weaving plant. He asked his chief financial officer to conduct a financial evaluation financial evaluation of the project. To do so, she needed to calculate the weighted average cost of capital, using the comparative method to calculate the cost of capital for the unlisted firm based on financial data from Imaam and comparable firms, and determine the feasibility of the project.

In August 2022, a Canadian investor, Adam Eissa, was considering making an investment in Nautilus Inc. (Nautilus). Nautilus was a manufacturer of connected home fitness equipment that was experiencing financial volatility amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Before coming to a decision, Eissa wanted to analyze the financial data from Nautilus’s annual report and complete a business size-up of its corporate strategy.

Cynet Systems Private Limited (Cynet) was a subsidiary of Cynet Corporation, a technology services firm providing staffing support for US clients. The Cynet team in India was based in smaller Indian cities such as Karnal and Dehradun. When a lockdown was announced in early March 2020 to curb the spread of COVID-19 in the country, the recruiters working for Cynet had to shift to remote work. This was a dramatic shift for the young recruiters, most of whom were recent college graduates. The onus of ensuring the client deliverable was met was on Shyam Sharma, the team leader at Cynet. At that time, the company created a centralized data reporting team, and in December 2021 the organization was still looking to enhance an analytics dashboard to better predict employee performance; further analytical insights would allow Cynet's top management to make better predictive outcomes versus what was currently being measured to evaluate performance.

Spreadsheet to accompany product W31026.

Instructor Spreadsheet to accompany product W31027.

Fundrr was a South Africa-based alternative funding business that launched in 2018. The business’s goal had been to disrupt the South African business lending landscape, specifically at the small- to medium-sized enterprise (SME) level where the majority (about 71 per cent) of SMEs generated annual revenues of less than R200,000 and employed between two and five people. Reflecting on the company’s journey in October 2021, the company’s founders realized that Fundrr had weathered the COVID-19 storm and had grown 630 per cent between September 2020 and September 30, 2021. However, there was a discrepancy between their current client base and the founders’ vision for the company as a disruptive, innovative, entrepreneurship-friendly alternative funder seeking to offer financial backing options independent of those granted by traditional banking institutions. The typical Fundrr client was usually in their fifties and male. Operating on a continent with the youngest population in the world, what did this say about their marketing and brand positioning? How could they apply the same resourcefulness and relevance to position the business into the future?

<p align="justify">Mamaearth, founded in 2016, started as a direct-to-consumer personal-care brand and carved a niche for itself as a trusted, toxin-free baby-care, skin-care, and hair-care brand in a competitive Indian personal-care market landscape that included established multinationals. In 2022, its parent company, Honasa Consumer Private Limited (HCL), raised $52 million in financing for a valuation of US $1.2 billion, becoming the first unicorn of 2022. HCL also acquired BBlunt, a hair-care and styling-products business in a ₹1.34 billion deal that was seen as a significant step toward meeting Mamaearth’s growth aspirations.<br><br> In a competitive personal-care market landscape, the leading companies had realized health-aware consumers’ need for natural and toxin-free products and were innovating and aggressively pushing chemical-free products. Mamaearth now faced a challenge in taking the next leap forward: it needed to grow its market, retain its sustainable positioning, determine its consumer segment, and build a communication strategy around these factors as a trusted, toxin-free skin-care and hair-care company.

Given the turmoil in the cryptocurrency sector, some say the blockchain revolution is over. Others think market setbacks and implementation challenges will eventually be overcome, potentially enabling the mass adoption of a decentralized “Web3” that will revolutionize how people work, play, and earn a living. So, what should executives think? In this Ivey Business Journal interview, Alex Tapscott discusses what has happened since the publishing of Blockchain Revolution, along with his new book Web3: Charting the Internet’s Next Economic Frontier. Tapscott explains how with the rise of Web2, Internet users agreed to a system of digital feudalism by giving away their data in exchange for free services. The future he sees will invert the model from digital feudalism to a form of self-sovereign identity where you control and own your data, and you decide how and when it’s used—and if it’s used, you can get compensated. People will enjoy more privacy rights and many might end up working for a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), which will benefit people in places where local markets don’t offer many employment opportunities. Creators will enjoy new ways to connect with fans and directly earn money from them, while fans will have a new way to experience the creativity they enjoy. However, without decentralized blockchain we’ll end up with hyped-up databases controlled by a single company, which wouldn’t be Web3 but “virtual Disneylands.”

The mission of Fairphone, an Amsterdam, Netherlands-based social enterprise company, was to design, produce, and sell smartphones that had a more positive impact on the environment and society. Fairphone was rated as the most sustainable smartphone in 2021 and was considered as a champion for the circular economy in the smartphone industry. Since 2018, Fairphone had been headed by Eva Gouwens. Under Gouwens’s leadership, Fairphone had more than doubled sales between 2018 and 2019. Sales were an important measure of impact for Fairphone and a driver for much of its strategy. In 2021, Fairphone announced a distribution agreement with Vodafone Group plc, the launch of a new flagship phone, and expanded recycling services. Fairphone now wanted to consider how to rapidly scale its impact in 2022 and beyond, and determine how it could increase sales. Should it consider new markets or new offerings? Or should Gouwens shift Fairphone’s focus from sales to some other strategic goal?

Cashify, a start-up incorporated in 2013, is a reverse commerce (re-commerce) company in India with first-mover advantage in the re-commerce of electronic goods. In its contribution to the circular economy (CE), it claims to handle 100,000 used smart phones a month and plans to grow the figure to 200,000 by 2023. The company contributes to the CE by adding value to used electronic devices, particularly smart phones, and extending their lifespans. This ensures that products enter into repeat economic transactions before finding their way to landfills. However, the re-commerce model that gave Cashify a competitive edge became obsolete in 2022 because of emerging competition that leveraged technological advancements to create value in the sector. The company’s founders now find themselves facing difficult questions: Should they include new electronic products in their portfolio? In 2022, after two years of COVID-19-related impacts on the economy, overall circular growth was slipping, as consumers preferred to buy new products instead of recycled, refurbished, and reused goods. Can consumers be incentivized to return to the CE and appreciate the value of remodelled goods? Should the company diversify into new products entirely, including automobiles, home appliances, textiles, apparel, and plastic packaging?

In November 2021, Procter & Gamble Company (P&G)’s announcement regarding the recall of more than a dozen of its Old Spice and Secret aerosol deodorants and sprays over elevated levels of benzene threatened to damage their brand value. Considering that product recalls come at a cost and involve various phases, P&G need to assess how the recall will impact their brand value. As the Cincinnati, Ohio, multinational consumer goods corporation progress with their recall, what can they do to sustain trust and confidence among their consumers and use the recall as an opportunity to solidify their brand image and superiority proposition and prevent an irreversible loss in their profits?

In July 2020, the chief executive officer and board chair of Essential Coffee Group based on the Gold Coast, Australia, was perusing the company’s financials. After continuous company growth and a distressed coffee consumption industry due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was the perfect time to explore inorganic growth opportunities. To continue to compete at a high level in the Australian coffee industry, Essential Coffee Group had to move fast by exploring opportunities to expand horizontally, such as acquiring the analogous coffee bean roasting company Coffee Time Pty Ltd. To determine the feasibility of the transaction, the Essential Coffee Group financial team would need to undertake comprehensive external, internal, and financial analyses. They would also have to complete a discounted cash flow valuation and a precedent transactions analysis to determine an appropriate offer price for the targeted firm.

Spreadsheet to accompany product W32150.

Instructor Spreadsheet to accompany product W32151.

In 2022, Runhua Group was a well-known automobile dealer in China with a large market share in the traditional fuel vehicle market. The recent surge of new energy (i.e., plug-in electric) vehicles was having a strong impact on the company’s main business. The high number of new automobile companies entering this promising market was threatening the dealership model, the traditional sales and distribution channel that dominated the market. Runhua Group had always held a long-term vision and a cautious attitude. However, it had to make a decision on how to respond to the subversive changes in the automotive industry in a timely manner. What should be the company’s strategy for the new energy vehicle business? How should it select which new energy brands to partner with?

As a top-ranking hospital in Western China, Huaxi (which means West China in Chinese) Hospital of Sichuan University (Huaxi Hospital) had been navigating a digital transformation journey. In the early phases, Huaxi Hospital focused on the development of setting up a digital foundation. Specifically, it created the relevant supporting departments and built eighteen digitalized systems. In 2013, when Weimin Li became president of Huaxi Hospital, he prompted the expansion of digitalization. Telemedicine services, hospital services using smart technologies, and online hospital services represented examples of the digital innovation adopted. More recently, the COVID-19 epidemic further accelerated the process of hospital digitalization, and Huaxi Hospital continued to advance and keep up with the rapid changes. Artificial intelligence-assisted diagnosis and big-data platforms were implemented during this later phase. However, despite its success and facing an increasingly turbulent and complex health care industry, Huaxi Hospital needed to continually explore future digital transformation strategies. What could the future of Huaxi Hospital look like in the digital age? How should the hospital prioritize its different initiatives plans and design a road map for its future digitalization?

On October 18, 2021 a Zomato app user wanted a refund for a missing item in his online food service order and contacted the company’s customer care agent over Twitter. The customer was from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where Tamil was the native language and a matter of parochial pride. What had started as a minor food order detail escalated into an online nationwide language debate with the accompanying hashtag #Reject_Zomato. The entire episode and ensuing online debate lasted less than 24 hours. But the matter created an indelible trail of negative publicity and scathing media coverage for Zomato, denting the company’s reputation. Was Zomato’s public response to the issue appropriate? Should the company review its use of Twitter as a customer care channel? More broadly, what changes should be considered for Zomato’s customer support function to deal effectively with culturally-attuned customer communication in a diverse market of 1.4 billion people with many different regional identities, cultural pride levels, and spoken languages?

Since its establishment in 1999, Xiamen Golden Home Co., Ltd. (GoldenHome) had adopted a high-end strategic positioning for its professionally produced kitchen cabinets. The company had first established a high-end brand image by differentiating its service and providing consumers with the ultimate full-process shopping experience. It had then consolidated a high-end perception of its products in the minds of its target customers by continuously researching and developing new processes and selecting high-quality materials. When changes in market and competition patterns led it to expand into new home-furnishing categories such as wardrobes and wooden doors, the company worked to transform its brand to encompass the entire range of customized home products. While customers had long recognized the high-end nature of the company’s kitchen cabinets, it had been more difficult to transfer this brand recognition over to the new product lines. Moreover, substantial changes in the competitive landscape had made the company’s original high-end positioning ambiguous. In 2022, the company faced a dilemma about its future development: Should GoldenHome use high-level strategic changes to establish its entire series as high-end products, or should it implement differentiated positioning for different product lines, maintaining the high-end positioning of its kitchen cabinet products while positioning other product lines for mass-market consumers?

In April 2021, the owner and founder of Claw & Kitty (CK) in Markham, Ontario, was considering moving his claw machine arcade to a larger location to continue growing his business. The owner had managed to grow his business despite the challenge of numerous pandemic-related shutdowns, and now he wanted to expand. He needed to decide whether this was a good time to do so. Would CK be able to survive if the Ontario government implemented future lockdowns or capacity limits? The owner had to assess the return and payback he might expect on this large investment and consider how he would fund the expansion. He would need to analyze the incremental revenues and costs and compare these against the investment to determine whether this move made sense from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives.

In March 2022, Nemus, an environmental planning, development, and sustainability consultancy based in Lisbon, Portugal, released a series of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) through its Nemus Earth initiative with the goal of supporting reforestation in the Amazon rainforest. The company purchased at-risk land in rainforests, created collectible NFTs, and used proceeds from the NFT sales to support reforestation and economic and social development in the region. While some purchasers praised the company for the NFTs, other stakeholders, such as activists, government officials, and Indigenous groups, questioned the efficiency and legality of the project. By July 2022, Nemus faced a decision: should it continue with its mission, or should it leave it up to governments and non-governmental organizations to lead the way on climate action? Could NFTs be effective in protecting rainforests, or were there better alternative paths?