The global renewables sector was in a slump, but the Indian market was booming. India's largest renewable electricity generator, ReNew, faced a dilemma: it traded on the Nasdaq in New York, but saw huge opportunity in the Indian market. In response, CEO Sumant Sinha was broadening the company's mission and activities to become a decarbonization solutions provider. The new scope included green hydrogen, manufacturing, storage, and contract power agreements. As India's decarbonization accelerated, has Sumant made the right choices?

In November 2017, Puneet Chhatwal, took charge as MD and CEO of IHCL, popularly referred to as the Taj Hotels. Despite being India's largest hospitality company by market capitalization and respected for its values and service, IHCL had made losses for the last seven years and had high debt levels. Chhatwal prioritized improving the company's profitability while reducing debt. He opted for an asset-light portfolio and refreshed the brand architecture. With each brand addressing a different price point, IHCL expanded its portfolio across different customer segments. The new strategy of 'asset-light' and 'multi-brand' yielded impressive financial results and Chhatwal started planning the next phase of IHCL's growth. What more should IHCL do to sustain this momentum, especially amidst increasing competition from global players?

Founders of Rocket Learning, an India-based nonprofit which focused on early childhood education (ECE), received an invitation from MIT's Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (JPAL), a development research organization, to test its intervention for ECE with a randomized controlled trial (RCT), the gold standard of impact evidence. Rocket Learning used classroom WhatsApp groups to provide parents access to byte-sized learning activities to help their children prepare for school. Since its launch in June 2020, Rocket Learning had reached over 50,000 low-income children in three states of India, in partnership with district and state governments. Though encouraged by the positive feedback from parents and teachers, the co-founders did not yet have evidence that Rocket Learning improved educational outcomes for early learners. They were elated to get the offer for a RCT in October 2020 but wondered whether the timing was right for the trial. After all, Rocket Learning was only five months old. Were the founders ready to do a largescale, rigorous evaluation and share the results publicly? If the results were negative, would it impact scaling? The founding team did not have much time in hand to decide.

Birla Carbon, a flagship business of the nearly $60-billion global conglomerate and India-headquartered Aditya Birla Group (ABG), is one of the world's top manufacturers and suppliers of high-quality carbon black. The largest among its 16 manufacturing plants is Birla Carbon Egypt (BCE), situated in the port city of Alexandria. BCE started its operations in 1994, to become the first carbon black manufacturing unit in Egypt and the Middle East. Over three decades it has grown to become a leading exporter in the region, playing a significant role in the Egyptian economy. However, the journey has not been without its challenges as BCE has tackled political unrest and frequent changes in government, besides growing concerns about pollution. Given Egypt's recent volatile political history, would BCE be able to successfully continue to separate business from politics? More broadly, what would BCE's success or failure mean on a global scale? As India seeks to grow into a great power, how would its economic footprint abroad distinguish it from other great powers? Could BCE represent a new, Indian version of FDI?

Launched in September 2018, e-retail startup DealShare has created a tech-enabled model for the Indian mass market that allows customers to buy together, save money on good quality goods, and at the same time have fun. It targets customers who are still getting used to the Internet for commerce and for whom big e-commerce players are not an ideal option. As DealShare transitions from a regional to a national company, the founders are at a crossroads. Until now, they have prioritized profitability at the unit economics level over growth. Now that they are confident that the DealShare concept can be profitable, should they relax their commitment to profitability and expand rapidly to preempt competition? Will the investments required and added complexity derail the company's success?

Founder-CEO of one of India's largest clean energy companies, ReNew Power, which develops, builds, and operates utility-scale wind and solar energy projects, has to decide the way forward for the company as the country and the world stand poised at the cusp of an energy revolution. In 2021, at the COP26 summit, India's Prime Minister had pledged that the country would achieve net-zero emissions by 2070 and raise renewable energy capacity fivefold by 2030. What role will ReNew Power play in this transition? Besides, with traditional power generators, which had focused on fossil fuel-based sources, finally taking notice of the renewables market, how can ReNew Power stay ahead of the competition?

Bühler Group, a Swiss multinational processing technology provider, started by selling machines for processing grains and later transitioned into selling food processing solutions. A family-owned business in the fifth generation, Bühler's high-end milling, grinding, sorting, and die-casting machines and its process engineering and services expertise were respected by the world's largest players in the food, feed, and automotive industries. The firm's purpose was formalized in 2010 under the slogan 'Innovations for a Better World.' With the establishment of its purpose, the firm began to transform itself from a quiet technology leader to a vocal advocate for innovation, education, and sustainability in its industry, a substantial challenge for a privately held Swiss company with CHF 3 billion ($3.2 bn) revenue. Though Bühler had nurtured its long-term partnerships with customers, the firm struggled to bring about a deeper embrace of sustainability across its customers' value chains, which it considered necessary. In 2016, the firm introduced the Bühler Networking Days conference as a platform to facilitate a dialogue on innovation, sustainability, and education in the industry. The event aimed to change the firm's one-on-one interactions with customers into a public and multilateral engagement. While planning the Networking Days 2022 conference, the firm's leadership wondered how they could use the forum to inspire others in the industry to commit to concrete outcomes. Besides, had Bühler done enough to embed sustainability in its internal and external innovation ecosystem? How should the firm measure impact and see whether the efforts made so far were simply incremental or collectively enough for Bühler to be a truly purpose-led firm?

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a multinational IT services company headquartered in Mumbai, is a subsidiary of one of India's most reputed conglomerates, the Tata Group. In 2020, TCS was valued at $144.7 billion, the highest for any company in the IT sector, globally. In the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis, like many companies around the world, TCS moved to remote working. The leadership of the company saw the myriad benefits of remote work. As the company planned for the future roadmap in the post-COVID world, it decided on a blended model. By 2025, only 25% of TCS employees would need to work in company facilities and no employee would need to spend more than 25% of their work hours in a physical office for the company to be productive. For this work model to be successful, the TCS management team had to brainstorm four key areas: What should the norms be for 25% in-person and who should determine them-senior managers, associates, clients, government regulators? How should the company convince veterans that virtual mentoring was as effective-if not more so-in preserving and further enriching the culture of mentorship? How should TCS deal with labor regulations around the world, if 'Talent on the Cloud' led to workers relocating and living in different geographies? Finally, how should TCS pitch this new model of work to clients once the pandemic eased?

Pratham is a non-governmental organization, focusing on high-quality, low-cost and replicable interventions to address gaps in the Indian education system. Co-founder Madhav Chavan is interested in using technology for education but differed in the way it is used in schools in India. He believes that technology allowed flexibility and non-linearity in exploring knowledge while the school classroom is based on a rigid and linear path of learning textbook lessons for the sake of examinations. Keeping this in mind, Chavan designs a digital initiative, PraDigi Open Learning, to improve basic numeracy and literacy skills among children in rural India. Electronic tablets pre-loaded with content are distributed in a few villages to help increase children's engagement with learning. Self-directed peer group learning is encouraged. The tablets trigger the children's curiosity. Post-COVID 19, when children are not able to attend class because of the lockdown, Chavan wonders how PraDigi Open Learning can be scaled and aligned with school education to ensure uninterrupted learning.