In early 2024, Ruth Jones, head of digital banking at Signa Bank, a (fictitious) European consumer bank, was thinking about how to best incorporate GenAI capabilities to improve efficiencies and create new ways to improve the customer experience. Where were the biggest opportunities? How could the bank incorporate GenAI to better personalize the customer experience? And what were the most effective strategies to mitigate the number of product and enterprise risks that would arise? Jones needed to ensure that as the technology was increasingly embedded and incorporated across the bank's operating systems, that there would be no negative fallout on its consumers or its reputation.
In early 2023, Maggioncalda, CEO of US EdTech firm Coursera, launched Project Genesis to develop a strategy for incorporating GenAI capabilities into the firm's offerings, asking his teams to focus on value to the firm and cost of implementation. The team identified several projects: powering translations and modifying content format and delivery, personalized coaching, an automatic course-building tool, and the building out of new GenAI-related academic content. By early 2024, the firm had made significant progress in bringing these ideas to market, but there was still much to do. Technology was fast evolving, and Coursera needed to continuously improve its offerings. Maggioncalda wanted better branding to make personalized coaching a distinctive advantage of the firm's platform. For its course builder tool, Coursera and its university partners had to work through difficult intellectual property and branding questions. But more broadly, Maggioncalda remained alert to the risks presented by the advent of GenAI. While the firm had been an early mover, competitors were fast adapting. Was Coursera taking full advantage of the opportunities presented by the technology? What more could it do?
In February 2022, Canadian Pension Plan (CPP) Investments, the investment management organization that managed funds for the CPP, one of the biggest pension plans in the world, announced a net-zero commitment for its portfolio by 2050. Under its CEO, John Graham, it outlined key actions to get there but pleasing stakeholders on all sides was a tough ask. While some lauded the fund's efforts, others questioned its decision not to set interim emissions reduction targets and to continue to finance fossil fuel firms. In practical terms, executing on the firm's sustainable investing approach meant making appropriately weighed investment decisions daily, a complex exercise. In mid-2023, one such investment under consideration was Aera Energy, a California oil and gas asset transitioning to a green business model-renewables and carbon capture and storage.
In 2023, sustainable investors faced several challenges. The first was the lack of access to standardized and vetted environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data, and equally, the interpretation of this data into investment-useful insights. Reducing reliance on third-party-generated ESG ratings was also an issue. Another challenge was mitigating the risk of greenwashing. Finally, sustainable investors were also under pressure to stay focused on maximizing financial returns. PortageBay, a sustainable analytics platform that leveraged AI to aggregate and analyze ESG data, was founded to solve these problems. As the platform grew, two clients approached PortageBay for help in ascertaining whether they should include Amazon and Goldman Sachs within their climate and gender-focused exchange-traded fund (ETF), respectively. The founders delved into PortageBay's suite of tools to answer their questions.
The case describes India's economic development trajectory, with a specific focus on the last few years under the Modi administration. It provides insights into the current economic profile and competitiveness of the country. The case enables students to identify the significant economic opportunities India has as well as the key barriers for growth it will have to remove.
Bizongo, an Indian e-B2B platform was co-founded by three college graduates in 2015 with the goal of creating the "Alibaba of India" when the B2B e-commerce landscape was practically non-existent. The founders saw a significant opportunity in connecting mid-sized enterprise buyers and small-scale suppliers in India's highly fragmented manufacturing sector. The journey had been difficult, but by 2023, Bizongo had carved a niche for itself with its platform offering digital order placement and processing and its financing facility for SMEs. It focused on the unbranded customized goods segment like packaging products and apparel. But with more players vying for market share and India's digital public infrastructure potentially set to disrupt the industry, the co-founders were under pressure to consolidate their position. They needed to take several decisions. Should Bizongo attempt to onboard more buyers and vendors, or increase wallet share among existing customers? Should it convert its platform to a truly open marketplace model that would allow vendor and enterprise discovery? Should it go deeper in existing product categories or build product breadth by adding more categories? How should the team think about consolidating upstream operations? Should it expand into Southeast Asia? At the core of the dilemma was finding the strategy that would best enable Bizongo to monetize its offerings.
Sajjan Jindal, Chairman & Managing Director of JSW Steel, India's largest steel producer by market capitalization, was facing a dilemma. Steel demand in India was expected to grow exponentially over the next decade. However, given its traditional reliance on carbon, steel was a "hard to abate" sector and was one of the most highly polluting industries globally. It was particularly polluting in India, where its production relied heavily on the use of coal. Given investor's increasing focus on sustainability, and global regulatory changes that were likely to penalize high emitters, Jindal was acutely aware of the need to decarbonize production. But investing in these technologies required heavy capital expenditure. Moreover, technology was fast evolving and there was considerable uncertainty about which one would be the ultimate "winner." Jindal and his team needed to make decisions. What kind of emissions intensity should it target, how much should it allocate towards decarbonization strategies, and which technologies should it bet on?
T.V. Narendran, CEO of Tata Steel, India's oldest steel manufacturing firm, had taken concrete business and cultural transformation steps to future-ready the firm since taking over in 2013. He had deleveraged and instilled financial discipline, acquired new businesses, entered new segments and adjacent businesses, and launched digital transformation, agility, safety, and sustainability programs. At the heart of his transformation program lay the digitalization drive. Now, he turned his attention to the firm's burgeoning B2C business. In 2018, the firm had launched an e-commerce platform to sell products directly to retail customers. Now he needed to decide whether to open up this platform to non-Tata group third-party suppliers of ancillary home construction products, like cement, paint, tiles, and other home fittings. Would this create a unique one-stop shop for construction-related goods, or take Tata Steel further away from its core mission? He and his team needed to decide fast.
In 2016, India passed a new bankruptcy law (IBC) to counter a brewing bank crisis and increased corporate distress. Homebuilder Jaypee Infratech, one of India largest distressed companies (the "dirty dozen") began restructuring under the IBC in 2017. Two years later, the situation remains unresolved, the Supreme Court is involved, there are two interested bidders for the company, and a creditor group that includes Indian banks and local homebuyers. Should York Capital bid to purchase some of Jaypee's secured debt and at what price?
Janalakshmi Financial Services (JFS), an Indian microfinance institution, had grown rapidly by providing financial products to its main customer base, the urban poor. However, the company was facing several challenges. JFS's productivity was declining, and it was experiencing a high and above-market-average attrition rate in its sale force-i.e., the loan officers. In addition, the division of duties for origination and collection by the two types of salespeople-customer-relations executives for sales (CRES) and for collection (CREC)-was perceived as a problem for the company's social mission of serving the urban poor, as the salesperson-customer relationship had become transactional. Because the primary form of customer contact was through the loan officers, JFS needed to find a solution for improving the existing sales compensation system in order to establish a performance-focused culture and to lower the employee attrition rate. In addition, it wanted to explore the possibility of streamlining the duties of JFS's sales staff to eliminate any overlapping duties between the two different types of loan officers (CRES and CREC), and sought to align employees with the firm's values and social mission of serving the urban poor. The case study illustrates the challenges that organizations face when constructing a new compensation system to achieve multiple outcomes. Although the case focuses on salespeople, it relates to general employees and, thus, can be used in courses in general management or HR policies. Also, because of its industry-specific contents (micro finance), the case can be used in courses related to financial inclusion in developing countries.