<p align="justify">VALR, a cryptocurrency platform and South African financial technology (fintech) company, was experiencing scaling challenges in August 2021. Launched in 2018, the start-up took on the market incumbent—a company trading in 40 countries. Within 18 months, VALR had become the market leader in terms of locally traded volume. However, this created growth pains and presented the issue of how the company could scale successfully. The company’s chief executive officer, Farzam Ehsani, believed that entrepreneurial orientation (EO) was a core strength and an instrumental factor in VALR’s success, but he was faced with the dilemma of how to scale it. The founding team had been able to sustain an organizational culture that advanced autonomy and risk-taking to that point, and maintained high levels of competitiveness and service. However, as the business entered a new phase of maturity, Ehsani faced the challenge of how the organizational culture could be scaled to continue fostering EO. In addition, Ehsani worried about the regulatory uncertainty that characterized the cryptocurrency industry.
The case describes the nature of the challenges facing Osman Arbee, CEO of Motus Holdings Limited (Motus) and his executive committee (exco) as they led the business through the challenges inherent in the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the South African government’s initially stringent response to it. Arbee and other exco members explain the competing interests of different stakeholders and highlight the urgency with which they needed to act to ensure the long-term viability of the business. Motus is an integrated automotive holding company based in Ekurhuleni, near Johannesburg, South Africa. Its four divisions include Import and Distribution, Retail and Rental, Motor-Related Financial Services, and Aftermarket Parts.
A social entrepreneur running a business in Khayelitsha, near Cape Town, South Africa, made and distributed healthy bread-based products for consumers in a poor community through his social enterprise, the Spinach King. His aim was to improve consumers’ eating habits and help them improve their health. In early 2014, after facing and overcoming many difficulties related to starting this social enterprise start-up in a resource-constrained context, this entrepreneur had a successful business. The business model had evolved over time, and while it was still small in scale, the owner was convinced that it was ready to scale. He needed to determine what business model would be most appropriate going forward and how he could implement it.
In June 2017, a bancassurance director at South Africa’s Liberty Group Limited (Liberty) was making his way to a public school in Soweto, south of Johannesburg. Liberty was an insurance company in South Africa, part of Liberty Holdings, a leading financial-services group with representation in 24 countries across the African continent. As he drove along the highway he wondered how he could encourage more business leaders at Liberty to get involved and ultimately contribute to improving the country’s public-education system. He recognized that there were ethical implications in using the school in Liberty’s marketing campaign—a campaign that would eventually contribute to a goal of sustainability. Various issues had to be considered that related to conducting business with people at the bottom of the pyramid and a decision had to be made.