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The case is set in March 2018. Neha Bhatia Ramdas, Director of Sales at Juntos Global, is visiting a prospective partner bank of her company in Singapore, which wants to expand its outreach amongst the unbanked population in South East Asia. The partner bank is not comfortable in sharing their customer data with Juntos, and Ramdas has been entrusted with the difficult task of convincing the partner bank to share their data with Juntos. Juntos specialises in deploying SMS based solutions powered by data analytics capabilities for financial service providers to help them serve their newly banked customers more efficiently. The Juntos SMS based platform helps the newly banked customers to build formal savings habits through behavioural science strategies by building a relationship of 'trust' with their customers. By creating trusting relationships between financial service providers and their customers based on the principles of Human Centred Design (HCD), Juntos was able to generate measurable increases in account usage in many of its projects. The Juntos business model was a partnership model, wherein the partner financial service was equally involved in the implementation of the Juntos solution, especially at the beginning of the project. Juntos used an agile implementation process for project implementation that was preceded by a useful ethnographic study that allowed Juntos to customise their solution for their partner clients. Juntos typically implemented pilot projets with their partners, before implementing large-scale projects. The flipside of this arrangement was the long sales cycle that was the primary impediment to Juntos success.

The case describes the efforts of Group Audit at DBS Bank Singapore to enhance the value of services it offers to the organisation by adopting various methodologies that would make Internal Audit (IA) more effective. The case specifically focuses on Agile Auditing practices that was implemented on a pilot basis in 2016 as a part of Group Audit's Future of Auditing initiative, which was aimed at making IA productive, proactive, predictive and preventive. It demonstrates how introducing agile practices to IA can help overcome the limitations of traditional auditing practices, and also assesses the additional benefits of agile auditing. It also discusses the strategy used by the Internal Audit team to gain stakeholder engagement and support to implement agile auditing within the organisation and examines the tools used by the team to assist in executing agile auditing. It elaborates on the SCRUM framework adopted by the team and the technology enablers that enabled the DBS internal audit team to execute their pilot Internal Audit projects successfully. Finally, the case highlights the advantages that agile auditing brought for DBS Group audit, and provides insight into how an agile approach to auditing can be successfully adopted in an organisation with minimal disruption within the existing team setup.

Rob Rosenstein, the co-founder of Agoda.com, had a difficult task ahead of him. Agoda had been acquired by a global online travel giant - the Priceline group in 2007. The terms of the acquisition were based on a three year earn-out period following which Priceline would pay Agoda the bulk of the acquisition pay-out. However, by 2008, Agoda was in dire need to improve its revenue figures, and the Priceline Group's board was pessimistic of Agoda's chances of hitting its earn-out targets. The general assumption was that the Asia based start-up's assets would be gobbled up and integrated into the group as part of its much larger and profitable western brand. Rosenstein, however, believed in the strengths of his company - a venture he had co-founded with Michael Kenny in 2005 in Singapore. Agoda.com was one of the first online travel platforms in Asia to build its business globally and attract travellers from all parts of the world. By the late 2000's however, Agoda had lost its dominance in Asia, with the emergence of global players in the market and rising competition from Chinese online travel agencies (OTA's). Other challenges like technology disruption, a fragmented and diversified Asian market, unstable political environment in Thailand (Agoda's largest office was in Bangkok at the time) and difficulty in attracting the right talent, obstructed its growth path as well. In December 2009, heightened concerns over the future of Agoda prompted Rosenstein to sit with his team and formulate a strategy to enable Agoda to hit its earn-out targets within the stipulated three year period ending in 2010. How could Agoda grow its business and revenue? How could it improve on its marketing strategy, further build its supply and attract more consumers to make bookings on its website? How could Rosenstein make the acquisition work?

Structo is a technology start-up conceived by Huub van Esbroeck and six other mechanical engineering undergraduates from National University Singapore (NUS) in 2014. The founding team at Structo had built a prototype of a 3D printer which could print four times faster than the 3D printers available in the market within the same price bracket. After building their proof-of-concept machine, the team had approached 3D printing service bureaus to sell their product. They discovered that their printer had to be heavily customised to meet the diverse needs of various printing jobs performed by service bureaus. Structo was a small start-up with limited funding and resources, and hence building customised printers was a nonviable business model for the firm. The company had to either find a new target customer base or identify large funding partners to sustain its business. Coincidently, the Structo team received a phone call from a dental practitioner in Singapore and discovered that their printer could meet the needs of dental practitioners with virtually no customisation. The 'Eureka' moment provided a new burst of enthusiasm. However, Structo soon discovered that unlike its first customer, most dental practitioners approached dental labs for their 3D printing needs. The Structo team pivoted their business model to suit the needs of dental labs, and the business took flight. By 2018, Structo's business had grown significantly. The company had also forayed into 3D printing materials business and started building its material. However, the company's medium-term goal and primary focus were to grow in the dental market. Structo was gradually transitioning from start-up phase to a growth phase in its entrepreneurial journey. Van Esbroeck now wondered how Structo could scale its business rapidly. How could Structo prepare itself as an organisation for the next stage of growth?

Zilingo, a play on the word 'Zillions', is an online e-commerce platform for selling fashion products and was founded by Ankiti Bose and Dhruv Kapoor in Bangkok in 2015. Established with the vision of providing the small seller in South East Asia with an efficient online platform to sell their products, Zilingo had grown 25% month-on-month in its second year of operation. The Zilingo e-commerce platform is driven by data analytics-driven research tools to enable small sellers to target demand from customers and drive sales efficiently. Reports generated by the platform encompass buyer statistics, supplier statistics, fashion trends and buyer preferences. Suppliers can manage logistics through third-party logistics partners available on the platform, and better sell their products by using the myriad tools available on the mobile-friendly app to upload images of their products, manage inventory, schedule pickups, track orders, consult on price-setting, and even liaise with third-party loan providers. Zilingo had also built a significant consumer base by December 2017, with seller hubs in Hong Kong, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore and China. The company had also proved to be one of the fastest growing e-commerce businesses in South East Asia and had been able to raise substantial funding (US$27 million) within its first two years of operation. In April 2018, the company had raised US$ 54 million in funding, making it among the top ten funded startup companies in Singapore. The company has also launched its B2B product in the US market in line with its market strategy of quickly growing its customer base as well as its geographic base.

The case is set in December 2017, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and describes the journey of a mobile financial service (MFS) provider called SureCash in Bangladesh, and the various facets of the MFS industry in the country. The MFS industry in Bangladesh is perceived to be oliogopolistic. While this is a difficult market for a new entrant to get into, it is not yet a saturated marketplace. This is primarily because a considerable part of the population in the country still remain 'unbanked'. Amidst two significantly large players in the MFS market in Bangladesh, smaller players like SureCash have tried to create a niche by associating themselves with education fee collection initiatives, salary disbursement programs and government led projects like the Primary Education Stipend Program (PESP) launched by the Government of Bangladesh. While associating with large scale projects like PESP has its own advantages, taking up such large scale creation of MFS accounts has several challenges as well. The case on SureCash encapsulates this story by elaborating on the difficulties faced by the company in digitising the PESP initiative and opening accounts for more than 10 million mothers. This had helped the company to promote Financial Inclusion in rural Bangladesh for a section of the demographic who were less likely to have access to formal financial services than their male counterparts. Notably, Bangladesh is a country where a significant percentage of the total population still remained 'unbanked'. What remained to be seen was whether SureCash could keep the mothers engaged in their MFS platform over the long run? Also what could be the best strategy for SureCash to grow their presence in Bangladesh?

The case describes the decision dilemma faced by an entrepreneur, Jack Sim, whose social initiative aims to establish an innovative platform in Singapore and South Asia to serve the base of the pyramid (BoP), which represents a majority of the population of the world (about 60%) who live in poverty. The primary objectives of Sim's initiative, BoP Hub, are to provide professional services to social entrepreneurs catering to the BoP market, and help them develop and scale their businesses. Social entrepreneurs who want to address the needs of this segment of the population face a plethora of challenges: most notably, the lack of affordability in the BoP, inadequate access to basic facilities, and the dearth of channels of access to the BoP market. However, in addition to the social objectives, the BoP also has economic incentives, as the potential volume in this segment is huge, and it has aspirations to move into the middle class. The challenges faced by Sim in creating a platform to catalyse innovative products and services for the BoP include lack of access to traditional fundraising methods, the need of a common organisational strategy for entrepreneurs serving the BoP leading to multiple services being required by them, and the requirement of a well-understood model for scaling their businesses.

In 2015, Arnoud De Meyer, President of Singapore Management University initiated SMU-X. This unique programme made experiential learning accessible to undergraduate students, allowing them to gain exposure to real life work experience that could help improve their critical thinking, analytical and problem-solving skills. The key strength of the SMU-X initiative was that it had been thought through in great detail and was closely linked to the university's existing pedagogy to create a cohesive learning chain within the university. The pilot phase of the initiative was run for a year, and a lot of the hurdles that had initially seemed difficult to resolve were overcome during this phase. The general feedback from the pilot phase was quite positive and it was observed that this form of learning enhanced the learning value for students, faculty and other industry stakeholders. It was planned to roll out SMU-X across the entire SMU undergraduate cohort in 2016, and De Meyer was considering what would be the most effective mechanism to do so. This case provides the students with an opportunity to reflect on the elements that support the practice of innovation in an organisation, particularly in a service environment. It also enables students to learn about how an urban city university can create an environment for living and learning without the large campus living facilities of suburban universities. Finally, it allows students to visualise the considerations associated with scaling up a project operationally for an organisation-wide rollout.

The case is set in 2015 and follows Angela Toh, the founder and director of AJA Enterprises (AJA), a Singapore-based company established in 1999. The business began as a distribution company for silicone sealants and aluminium cladding for windows. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, Toh was inspired to focus on building security services and products. Expertise in this area led to the launch of Enerzorb in 2014, a patented AJA blast mitigation system for glass building facades designed to absorb, diffuse and transfer blast energy away from the impact area. The company has always pursued a cautious growth strategy, but now Toh must bring her company's patented Enerzorb technology to the international market in order to continue growing her company. A more aggressive approach may therefore be required. Creating greater awareness for her branded product remains a key challenge. AJA needs an effective strategy to not only grow new business beyond Singapore, but also attract serious investors and partners that can help the organisation scale up.