Founded in 2015, WayCool, is an Indian agri-tech start-up that built a B2B operation acquiring fruits and vegetables from product-specific agriculture companies and small-holding farmers. It sold them to business customers, such as local retail stores, restaurants, and hotels. The B2B strategy leveraged transparency, hygienic practices, and faster material and information flow to increase farmer incomes and reduce food wastage. Next, to enhance its 'inch-wide, mile-deep' approach using technology, WayCool scaled its supply chain using six software solutions: farmer support, procurement, warehousing, distribution to B2B customers, and two retailer solutions. In 2022, it spun off its software applications as a wholly owned tech arm, Censa. WayCool evolved its mission to 'supporting 1% of the global food supply chain.' This growth was supported by funds of $161 million raised over five investment rounds. WayCool's strategy was operating multiple businesses, tackling all aspects of the supply chain, in a historically informal sector in an emerging market. But the founders had to consider the risks. Multiple business streams increased complexity, and the founders were often asked, was WayCool spreading itself too thin? To ensure sustained performance over the long term, should WayCool focus on building all its businesses or narrow its focus?
Proactive for her began amid the Covid-19 pandemic, in August 2020 as a digital platform to provide accessible, evidence-based, primary, preventive non-judgmental healthcare services for Indian women, who were often dissuaded from seeking help as premarital sex and menstrual health was considered taboo. From her research and experience, Jacob identified that it was difficult for women to find unbiased and empathetic medical professionals who respected patient autonomy. By May 2022, Proactive was a platform that provided one-on-one teleconsultations, support programs, and webinars to customized treatment. It had reached over 5,000 women and opened its first flagship clinic in Bengaluru. It raised $1.2 million in its seed round in October 2020 and $5.5 million in Series A in January 2022. Proactive experimented with new solutions and products, with patient centricity at its core but as it prepared for Series B, had to figure out what business model would allow it to build a sustainable and profitable business that addressed the core issues?
boAt began as a lifestyle brand in the consumer electronics category in 2016 with the aim of bringing affordable, durable, and fashionable audio products and accessories to millennials and Gen-Z customers in India. Born in 2016 with Amazon India as its only sales platform, boAt started selling 'indestructible' connector cables. It moved to personal audio and over time, ventured into newer categories such as wireless audio, home audio, and smartwatches. Each category had custom-designed reasonably priced products supported by strong marketing efforts and a multi-brand ambassador strategy. It soon became one of India's first digitally native brands to record a revenue in excess of $65 million, and the fifth largest wearable company in the world. In early 2022, it brought in experienced executives to take the reins and steer the company on the right path as it prepared to file for an initial public offering. Newly appointed CEO Vivek Gambhir considered the next phase of growth. Would the boAt brand be strengthened by entering new categories? How should they think about leveraging offline channels? And lastly, should boAt consider international expansion?
Set up in 2008, VidyaGyan was a residential school for children in grades 6-12 from low-income rural families in Uttar Pradesh in northern India. It was the brainchild of Shiv Nadar and Cabinet Secretary T.S.R. Subramanian, who recognized the enormous potential hidden in the poverty-stricken districts of this state. Nadar and his daughter Roshni hoped that the VidyaGyan effect would self-multiply; that students would inspire not just their family, but their street, their village, and their entire community - creating "spirals of inspiration" that would transform rural India. Regardless of their future career plans, the foundation had decided to fund the college education of any student who scored above 93% in their grade 12 exams and many students received offers from universities in the US and other countries. Having opened the door to the world, Nadar and Roshni wondered was it fair to ask the students to turn their backs on the opportunities in front of them and return home to the rural countryside?
Fynd is a fast-growing venture that in 7 years since its founding has become India's largest omnichannel retail company with real-time access to over 9,000 stores' offline inventory. It started as a B2B business supporting retailers who didn't have an online business, but pivoted to a B2C platform that allowed customers to shop directly from nearby retail stores through its website and app. Over time, Fynd continued with its B2C platform, scaled up its organization, and added new B2B platforms. But funding this was difficult, with investors raising questions about the business model and growth. In its next phase of growth it sought and failed to receive funding from venture capitalists. In 2018, the founders took a strategic investment from Google. But the subsequent departure of their sponsor from Google meant they needed to look at other avenues for funding. As they were poised for their next phase of growth, the founders were faced with a series of decisions about the pace of scaling, the business model, and how to fund the expansion. In 2019, Reliance Retail, a subsidiary of one of India's largest private conglomerates, and one of their key customers offered to invest $42 million for an 87% stake in the company, and is willing to negotiate terms of the deal. Should the founders accept the offer? What should the terms of the agreement be? How will this impact their business model, their growth trajectory, and also the future of the founders at the firm?
Pradeep Gupta founded Axis My India (AMI) as a printing and publishing company in 1998. In 2013, AMI expanded into consumer research and election forecasting. Although a relatively unknown entity, AMI predicted several election results accurately. Gupta describes AMI's rigorous process of research, primary data collection from each constituency, quality checking of data by auditors and data analysis. AMI partnered with India Today Group to broadcast its forecasts for post-poll studies. For pre-poll studies and market research, its clients now included political parties and corporates. In 2019, as the Haryana state elections were drawing to a close, Gupta found that his team's prediction for the election result was distinctly different from all other pollsters. Puzzled by this, he had asked for one more day to verify his data. As Gupta reviewed his team's analysis (which had been confirmed by another round of interviews during the last 24 hours), he considered whether he should publish these numbers or revise them just enough to avoid controversy.
True North was a private equity fund that specialized in the growth and buyout of mid-market, India-centric companies. The leadership team initially believed that technology was not core to traditional businesses and steered clear of new age technology-oriented businesses. Then, in 2007, True North invested in Meru Cabs, a ride-sharing service with a growing fleet of cabs that had to change its business model with the launch of tech-based platforms like Uber. This experience led True North to significantly alter its stance on the importance of technology-powered business models. The team learned that all businesses needed to effectively become technology businesses to remain relevant. True North initiated the "Analytics, Algorithms and Artificial Intelligence" (3A) project. A system, Kelp, was designed and developed internally to facilitate the transformation of True North into an AI-first firm based on the introduction of data-driven decision making and productivity-enhancing digital tools. In 2020, as different elements of Kelp were launched, the leadership team met to discuss the future of this technology.
Amazon has been unsuccessful in its efforts to develop a business in China. Even though Amazon was an early entrant into China's e-commerce space, its domestic rivals, especially Alibaba, created innovative business models uniquely suited for the conditions in China. Amazon's failure to adapt to the local conditions in China ultimately led to its exit from the country. Determined to learn lessons from this experience as it developed its business in India, Amazon made a number of innovations in its business model in India. By 2020, Amazon established a strong presence in India. However, the company faces a number of challenges because of changes in regulation that challenge its hybrid business model of both being a seller of its own goods and a marketplace for third party sellers, the rise of strong local rivals, and its own ambition to expand beyond top tier cities and upper middle class customers in India.
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?
Jai Vakeel, a nonprofit organization in India, serves individuals with Intellectual Disability (IQ below 70). The organization was founded by the parents of a child with Down Syndrome, and they (and their next generation) steadily built the organization over 60 years to the become the largest such organization in India. Yet the organization served only some 1000 children annually when there were millions more needing the healthcare, education and skills to lead a decent life with ID. This case describes the evolution of the organization from the founder's family (six decades) to the first CEO from outside. As Archana Chandra appointed in 2013 brings about several changes to the organization she wonders how to scale the organization from the current 1,000 people it serves annually to at least 10,000 and then to the many millions who are in need.