Bigbasket was India's largest online grocery and food store established in 2011 by a group of entrepreneurs Hari Menon, Vipul Parekh, V S Ramesh, V S Sudhakar, and Abhinay Choudhari. In 2016, Bigbasket sold more than 18,000 products and 1,000 brands operating across 12 Indian cities. Online grocery market in India has been small, but a rapidly growing segment. According to "The Retailer" Ernst and Young's publication in consumer products and retail sector, during July-September 2015, India was among the top-10 food and grocery markets in the world, with an estimated size of INR 22.5 trillion (approximately USD 350 billion). The market has grown at 10-12% CAGR between 2010 and 2015, with food and grocery being the largest segment, accounting for close to 60% in 2015 alone. The protagonist of the case, Pramod Jajoo, Chief Technology Officer, at Bigbasket was trying to solve two problems frequently encountered by customers of online grocery stores. It was estimated that about 30% of Bigbasket customers place orders through smart phones. Unlike other e-commerce companies such as Amazon, Bigbasket customers place order for several products in a single order, sometimes as high as 80 in one order depending on their purchase frequency. When the basket size is high, using smart phones to place order is challenging. Also, it is a common phenomenon that customers forget to place order few grocery items which may result either in placing additional orders or customers purchasing those products from neighborhood stores resulting in a financial loss to online grocery stores. Jajoo and his team wanted to create a "Smart Basket" that would make placing orders easier for their customers and "Did you forget?" feature that would identify the items the customer may have forgotten to order.

The case focuses on the launch of McDowell's Vintage Premium Indian Whisky in the mid-1980's (the dates used in the case are later and exchange rates and prices have been adjusted accordingly. The essence of the marketing challenge faced by the marketing manager is unaffected by the later dates). McDowell must deal with a common dilemma faced by domestic firms in developing economies where growth frequently produces a greater concentration of wealth at the upper end of the market. Frequently domestic products in developing nations are perceived to be of poor quality and do not have the cachet of well-known international trademarks. As a result, the growing affluence of the middle class in these nations can lead to increasing consumption of high price, high margin imports while domestic products are restricted to the low price/high volume business where it is difficult to be profitable. To address this problem, McDowell has developed a product that compares favourably in taste tests with imported products however; it does carry the baggage of being a domestic brand. The case considers the problem of the marketing manager for McDowell's Vintage PIW who must choose a positioning and marketing strategy for his product. An important decision is whether the new product should be positioned as an acceptable alternative to imported scotch or whether it should be positioned as the best tasting domestic product. A further problem for the manager is to choose an appropriate marketing strategy for the product given the size of the country and the difficulty of reaching the target market. The timing of the case is 6 months before the scheduled launch for the product. The manager needs to finalize the positioning for the new product. In addition, the manager is considering several alternative strategies for the product that involve difficult decisions in terms of distribution, promotion and packaging.