In September 2022, Balmer Lawrie & Co Ltd., a highly diversified Indian public-sector enterprise, was reviewing the outcomes of its mentorship program, which had been launched as a pilot initiative about a year earlier. The company had hired an external consultant to help design and speedily launch the first offering of the mentorship program, enrolling 25 mentor-mentee pairs. Now, it needed to refine the program, strengthen the measurement of its benefits, and plan a scaled-up rollout across the organization. The company aimed to make the mentorship initiative a long-term, self-sustaining program.
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.
By March 2022, the board of NTT DATA Group Corporation (NTT) had identified “innovation centers” as a critical investment priority of its midterm management plan. NTT, a multinational information technology services company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, provided a range of technology consulting services and industry solutions to large business customers. With the success of innovation centers in the US and Europe, NTT decided to explore whether to open innovation centers in countries such as India and China. If so, it needed to determine what capabilities to develop there. Hiroshi Furukawa, head of research and development (R&D) and innovation at NTT, had to identify the new innovation centers’ locations, define their formats, and plan for customer collaboration opportunities.
In March 2020, the director of Shikshaa Public School (SPS), a privately owned school with 785 students, located in Chennai, India, and his wife and co-founder were reviewing the school’s performance and deciding its strategy going forward. The Indian education sector was highly regulated and competitive. Government schools, government-aided schools, and private schools all competed for new student enrolments to obtain a portion of the US$101.1 billion (in fiscal year 2019) Indian education sector. Having recently taken out a bank loan to construct a school building that increased SPS’s capacity to 3,000 students, the cofounders were considering ways to increase SPS’s revenue and profitability. The options considered were (1) more effective marketing to attract an increased enrolment of new students; (2) relocation of SPS to an upmarket location, where families had the potential to pay higher fees; and (3) acquisition of another school to expand rapidly and leverage the SPS brand.
In January 2020, the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Salt n Soap, an online retailer of food and groceries in Kolkata, India, was reviewing the company’s strategy and business model. Salt n Soap had been in operation for six years, and now offered nearly 15,000 food and grocery (F&G) products of 1,000 distinct brands through its online retailing website. However, the Indian online F&G retail industry was highly competitive. Salt n Soap had a limited business footprint, mainly concentrated in Kolkata, India and unlike its competitors, it had not raised external equity funding. The CEO had to quickly reassess the current business model and strategy and prepare for the oncoming challenges from an increasingly competitive business environment. The decision had to be made before the end of the month so that any strategic changes could be implemented within the current financial year.
In June 2019, the cofounders of BharatAgri, an Indian agritech (agricultural technology)-focused entrepreneurial venture, were reviewing their strategy. BharatAgri leveraged information technology to provide crop-management related advisory services to Indian farmers and provided data analytics-driven decision dashboards to organizations that worked with farmers. They had onboarded nearly 6,000 Indian farmer-customers and had raised ₹40 million (INR) of venture capital funding to date. Their target was to onboard 20,000 farmers as paying customers by 2021. Could they also generate revenues by selling farm-management related data to agriculture-related organizations? In the next meeting, they were expected to present a comprehensive and cogent strategy to their financiers.
In January 2016, the three partners of CampusHash Technologies LLP (CampusHash), an Indian start-up focused on conducting software training programs, had to make some pressing strategic decisions. CampusHash’s revenues had not grown as expected and the partners had to decide whether to continue with the existing business model or choose to pivot. While pivoting could potentially lead to a significant improvement in CampusHash’s performance, it could also lead to wide-spread organizational change and disruption, risking the survival of the start-up. Despite their constrained resources, the partners had to decide whether to pivot or not in the next two weeks, when they would present a business plan to angel investors to raise much-required funding.
In March 2017, a training manager at IndCo, a large Indian manufacturing conglomerate, faced a pressing problem. She had been asked by one of IndCo’s general managers to design and implement a customized training program on strategic thinking for his departmental team. Because she had prior commitments and had never conducted a training module on this topic before, the training manager sought to outsource the program to an external expert–a professor from a reputable business school. Although this arrangement seemed promising, the professor’s training proposal presented certain challenges, including cost and availability. The training manager needed to assess whether the proposal met IndCo’s requirements, and whether she had made the right decision in outsourcing this task. She had to choose her next steps very carefully to avoid displeasing any of the involved parties, while also satisfying IndCo’s budget constraints and ensuring the ultimate delivery of a high-quality training program.
In July 2015, the founder of YourStory Media Private Limited (YourStory) needed to make key strategic decisions to scale up her business. YourStory was a top-ranked online media platform that focused on developing the entrepreneurial ecosystem in India by publishing news stories about entrepreneurs and start-ups and by organizing entrepreneurial conferences and events. Since its inception in 2008, the company had grown slowly and steadily using its own funds. However, it needed to expand rapidly in order to attract venture capital funding. YourStory’s founder knew that potential investors would translate their initial interest into actual investments only if she was able to demonstrate that YourStory had a coherent, comprehensive, and consistent story of its own. She had identified various strategic growth alternatives: given the evolving online media marketplace, which should she pursue to meet her expansion goal?
In August 2016, the director of UdaipurTimes.com, a hyperlocal news website, and his partner were faced with a problem. Their start-up venture had thus far grown without any explicit strategy. Despite a steady readership of nearly 200,000, achieving further revenue growth and sustained profitability were ongoing issues. UdaipurTimes.com needed to come up with a comprehensive strategy by evaluating various alternatives (such as creating a mobile app and soliciting user-generated content) to increase the frequency of customer visits and attract new readers to the website. Given its limited financial strength and its focus on speedily growing its customer base while leveraging current resources and capabilities, what strategy should UdaipurTimes.com choose?
In August 2016, Manish Goyal, a student in his second year of the two-year MBA program at XLRI Jamshedpur, India, had to make career-related choices about which industry, company, function, and role to pursue after his MBA. He had limited previous work experience to rely on, but rather than choosing the first job that came his way or trying to join one of the more popular firms among MBA students, Goyal sought a job that best aligned with his own career objectives. Accordingly, he sought advice from three classmates on career options in the investment banking, management consulting, and fast-moving consumer goods industries. He realized that while his friends' input was valuable, ultimately he had to make his own decisions.
In January 2015, the chief executive officer and managing director of Tata Consultancy Services, India’s largest information technology company, expected to face questions from the media related to recent rumours of his company’s plans to lay off nearly 30,000 employees. Over the previous four weeks the reports had spread on both social media and conventional media platforms, leading to widespread protests against the company and attempts to unionize information technology employees (a first in India). The company’s carefully constructed corporate reputation of being employee friendly was threatened. The chief executive officer needed to design and execute a communication strategy that addressed the concerns of the various stakeholders involved.
In February 2016, the owner of Moonka Automobile was struggling with the strategic decision he needed to make to increase revenue and improve profitability. Moonka Automobile had been in business as a full-service, two-wheeler dealership for eight years in India, had a strong customer base, a good reputation, and a positive relationship with the manufacturer, Honda. But, competition was increasing and business growth was slowing. The owner identified various alternatives for growth, but given the changes taking place in the two-wheeler market, the owner’s limited resources, and his excellent relationship with Honda, he needed to make some difficult decisions.
In April 2016, the owner of Moonka Automobile, a two-wheeled vehicle dealership for Honda Motor Company Ltd., was facing some difficult decisions regarding recruitment for Moonka Automobile’s new branch in Jamshedpur, India. The owner wanted to improve the process for recruiting salespersons for this second branch. In addition to the constraints of a tight budget, limited managerial time and availability, and the need to complete the recruitment quickly, the owner’s challenges included (1) identifying the knowledge, skills, and attitude he needed to look for in potential salespersons; (2) encouraging the appropriate candidates to apply for the job opening; and (3) improving the process to be followed for recruitment. The owner certainly did not want to rush things and end up recruiting unsuitable employees, which could have disastrous consequences for the business. At the same time, he needed to get sales underway in the new branch. How could the owner balance his many responsibilities while finding the right salespersons for Moonka Automobile?
In October 2014, the owner of Rajwant Engineering Pvt. Ltd., a small-scale manufacturing business in Jamshedpur, India, needed to make some key strategic decisions. The immediate challenge was that the company had recently been asked for a bribe by the procurement manager of its most important client. The business owner was a highly ethical entrepreneur, so he was tempted to discontinue his relationship with the client on ethical grounds. However, the business was facing major financial difficulties, and the owner felt great responsibility toward his employees. The business owner wondered if he should instead compromise on his values in order to save his business from bankruptcy.
In September 2014, the co-founder and director of Treks `n Rapids, a leading adventure sports tourism company in New Delhi, India, needs to re-evaluate the company strategy. The adventure sports tourism industry has tremendous potential for growth in India, largely due to the number of young professionals with disposable incomes and a desire for new experiences, and is witnessing increased demand from a variety of profitable customer segments, both domestic and foreign, corporate and individual. However, the industry suffers from various problems such as poor infrastructure, the country’s negative image in the minds of customers (especially with regard to safety and quality) and a string of natural disasters. Should the company focus on its currently profitable local corporate sector or diversify into other areas and other types of tourism?
Flatpebble is an innovative start-up e-business that acts as an online marketplace where customers can connect with professional wedding photographers. Flatpebble has reached a stage wherein it already has a good revenue stream and a recognized brand name across India. It is poised for rapid expansion, and the management team must evaluate the various strategic alternatives available. The Flatpebble team must design a comprehensive, consistent and coherent business strategy that will allow the company to scale up quickly, beat its competitors and stay relevant in the dynamic and rapidly evolving e-business industry.
In 2014, the owner of a family business that includes two fast-food restaurants, a highway restaurant and a catering services operation located in Pune, India, is confident that his business is at the cusp of taking off on a path that will make it significantly larger in scale. He is evaluating three alternatives: setting up a chain of small restaurants with a central kitchen facility, creating a couple of large restaurants similar to those that he has at present or investing in new highway restaurants. He also must consider whether he is ready to expand to other cities in India or globally and whether to develop family-owned land, buy new property or lease facilities for his planned ventures. He needs to come up with a strategy that best meets the needs of a changing business environment and also leverages his company’s existing resources and capabilities. Before the next management meeting, he must decide what to do, in what sequence to take up the opportunities available, how to go about operationalizing the plan and also what design fallback options can be designed in case things go wrong.
An ethical hacker had recently started his entrepreneurial venture, EnterAll InfoSec Solutions. A technologist who believed that “ethical hacking” had huge market potential, he and his partner were searching for a business model that would address the information security needs of corporate clients, public sector undertakings (PSUs) and government institutions. Ethical hacking was a specialized and relatively nascent field, and the entrepreneur foresaw many challenges in convincing customers to use the services of his start-up company. The immediate concerns were how to expand the business, identify an optimal business model, explore sources of funding and create a strong team.