Paytm was an Indian financial technology company. Since its launch in 2010, it had built a dominant payments system in India, comprising mobile wallets, offline payments via QR codes, and a payments bank that offered no-frills banking. However, in 2016, the Indian government launched a free, publicly available digital payments platform, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), that removed barriers for entry into the payments market. With its dominant advantage eroded, Paytm had to strategize a new business model to ensure profitability. By 2023, the company's leadership was confident that Paytm had found a profitable model and was on the right path. But they were still debating what was next for the company. Which business vertical should it focus on? Should it expand internationally? Which path would help Paytm become India's dominant fintech company?

Chai Point was an Indian food and beverage company focused on chai. It started in 2010 as a retail store network but soon expanded to corporate offices by developing an IoT-enabled automatic tea and filter coffee machine. By 2023, Chai Point had 170 stores and 5000 machines nationwide. However, it was still a fraction of India's vast tea market. With ambitions for greater scale, Chai Point launched a promising third vertical, MyChai Corner, to aggregate the unorganized chai market via a tech platform. MyChai Corner was in its pilot stage, but its expansion would require significant capital expenditure and an aggressive pricing strategy. How should ChaiPoint allocate its resources between its various verticals? Which vertical would help it achieve the maximum growth? How could the company create synergies between them?