Even as Parachute oil is the clear brand leader in the branded regular coconut oil market, having rapidly taken away share from the loose oil market, there is a threat emerging. The fastest growing segment in this category is the Value Added Hair Oil (VAHO) market which is further divided into four sub-segments - perfumed, cooling, Coconut Oil + and non-coconut oil. In each of these four categories, Marico's offerings are laggards. Not only are their shares a lot lower than the individual brand leaders in these four categories, some of these brands are actually directly comparing themselves (in television advertisements) to the flagship Parachute coconut oil brand. Shome thus has to balance maintenance of the leading position in the coconut oil market, to minimise cannibalisation in promoting the various VAHO offerings of Marico, and to gain on the leaders in these other categories. At Kobe, Leong and her team provided end-to-end influencer marketing services for clients including consultation on marketing strategies for realising brand objectives, assisting clients in identifying KPIs, execution and monitoring of campaigns, analysis of campaign results and providing recommendations. In addition, Kobe's AI driven influencer platform allowed clients to choose the most suitable influencers from a database of over 5000 influencers. Millennials in Singapore were social media savvy and often-brought products based on recommendations of influencers they trusted. Targeting this customer segment through social media was therefore a viable option. However, the Jia Jia campaign had a few limitations including a small budget and a short timeframe. Another constraint was that herbal tea was not popular with millennials.

The case is set in 2015, when DBS Bank applied to the Reserve Bank of India to operate as a locally incorporated subsidiary under the wholly-owned subsidiary (WOS) scheme. DBS had a presence in India since 1995 and had grown to become the fifth largest foreign bank by assets. Upbeat about the growth prospects, it was the first foreign bank to apply for the conversion from branch operation to WOS. The scheme would extend near-equal treatment to locally-incorporated foreign banks as with national banks, and it aimed to incentivise them to scale up their operations in return for opening new branches in under-banked and unbanked cities and issuing credit to companies categorised under the priority lending sectors. However, the past year had been challenging for DBS India. Its profitability had taken a hit as bad loans rose more than four-fold, climbing to the top of the list among all private banks in India. The bad debts were primarily due to delayed servicing of loans by construction companies, which were granted credit during a previous period of aggressive lending. The case discusses the opportunities and challenges the WOS brings to DBS India, leading to its final decision to apply for the scheme.

In October 2008, State Bank of India (SBI), India's largest state-owned bank, makes its foray into Singapore's consumer banking market. A year into operations, Anil Kishora, chief executive officer of SBI, Singapore, is charged to double the remittance earnings in the next 12 months, an onerous task for a young branch that is just finding its feet in a new market. Yet Kishora's team manages to successfully meet the target - remittance volume rose by 96% in ten months. Despite these successes, Kishora is aware of the challenges that lay ahead. Remittances have been a quick win and have yielded the necessary cash flow for the new division. But will the growth from remittance earnings be sustainable over the longer term? How can SBI establish a strong presence and build an identity in Singapore's mature and fiercely competitive market, beyond the remittance story?

Supplement to case SMU382. Dunia B is a follow up case to Dunia A, but can also be taught independently. This case discusses the challenges faced by the chief risk officer Raman Krishna after the launch of Dunia, during a time of unprecedented uncertainty in the midst of the 2008 worldwide financial crisis. During this time it has become difficult to manage the sales force and their motivation on account of ever tightening credit criteria and the inevitable reduction in loan volumes. There is a real need to understand how, and from where, to source a sufficient number of potential borrowers who will satisfy the revised criteria and also enable Dunia to meet their planned growth numbers. Dunia has been cautious with its first couple loans, but as it begins to loan out the remainder of its portfolio, the company needs to make some tough decisions on how to make the lending business work with such widespread uncertainty. In the Dunia B case, participants experience the challenges of pursuing profit with quality (versus quantity) growth. It provides students an opportunity to discuss the challenges of credit evaluation and approval strategies, as well as credit risk management, faced by a new financial institution. The instructor can also guide a discussion on the reliability of traditional rule-based models as opposed to a judgment-based approach.

Tata Consultancy Services' (TCS) Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) division faces the challenge of retaining their Generation-Y employees, with seven out of a thirteen-person team quitting within a month. Workforce dynamics in the BPO industry in India are a high growth area and employees often have offers from several respected competing firms. In particular, the thriving industry has a great impact on Generation-Y in India, which makes up an increasingly large share of the workforce. To this end, TCS has made significant efforts towards both engaging their Generation-X employees and retaining their Generation-Y employees - leaving the human resource head, Jagdish Chaudhari wondering what more needed to be done after this latest episode.

This case is a two-part case series. Part A of the case study is set in early 2011, and begins with Parag Gadre, the assistant vice president of marketing and strategy at Tata Chemical Limited (TCL), contemplating what to do with Tata Salt's flanker brand. It has been five years since I-Shakti was launched in 2006, and has since become the second biggest salt brand in India. I-Shakti was originally conceived as a flanker brand to satisfy demand that TCL's original flagship product, Tata Salt, could not satisfy. The target markets, pricing and other attributes of the two brands were originally envisaged to be very distinct. However, I-Shakti has far outperformed expectations, and is now at a stage where it could potentially cannibalise Tata Salt's market share. This case will stimulate a discussion on the concepts and rationale of a flanker brand. In addition to the overarching question of whether it is a good idea to introduce a flanker brand, it will also create a forum for discussing strategies that are available to a company when the flanker outperforms expectations and becomes a potential threat to the original premium brand that it was set up to protect. Finally, it also enables students to discuss whether market share is an appropriate concern for an organisation. Part B of the case is set at the start of 2012, about one year after the conclusion of Part A. Readers are given an update of the strategy that TCL adopted - a strategy that not only continues with I-Shakti Salt, but also ventures into the production and distribution of an I-Shakti brand of pulses. The reason for doing so is given in the case, and students are left to analyse whether they agree with the company's decision. This section also links back to the earlier Part A of the case study, as it gives the readers an example of a viable alternative that is available to the company in the event that it decides to play down or altogether phase out the flanker brand.

This case is a two-part case series. Part A of the case study is set in early 2011, and begins with Parag Gadre, the assistant vice president of marketing and strategy at Tata Chemical Limited (TCL), contemplating what to do with Tata Salt's flanker brand. It has been five years since I-Shakti was launched in 2006, and has since become the second biggest salt brand in India. I-Shakti was originally conceived as a flanker brand to satisfy demand that TCL's original flagship product, Tata Salt, could not satisfy. The target markets, pricing and other attributes of the two brands were originally envisaged to be very distinct. However, I-Shakti has far outperformed expectations, and is now at a stage where it could potentially cannibalise Tata Salt's market share. This case will stimulate a discussion on the concepts and rationale of a flanker brand. In addition to the overarching question of whether it is a good idea to introduce a flanker brand, it will also create a forum for discussing strategies that are available to a company when the flanker outperforms expectations and becomes a potential threat to the original premium brand that it was set up to protect. Finally, it also enables students to discuss whether market share is an appropriate concern for an organisation. Part B of the case is set at the start of 2012, about one year after the conclusion of Part A. Readers are given an update of the strategy that TCL adopted - a strategy that not only continues with I-Shakti Salt, but also ventures into the production and distribution of an I-Shakti brand of pulses. The reason for doing so is given in the case, and students are left to analyse whether they agree with the company's decision. This section also links back to the earlier Part A of the case study, as it gives the readers an example of a viable alternative that is available to the company in the event that it decides to play down or altogether phase out the flanker brand.

This case is a two-part series on Dunia. Case A is set in 2008, where founder CEO Rajeev Kakar has just spent 20 months setting up Dunia, a finance company in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The enterprise originated from a partnership between his former employer, Fullerton Financial Holdings (FFH) and a couple of key entities in the UAE that were keen on building a financial presence in the region. On September 15, 2008 - as the Dunia team is preparing to announce the opening of its first branch in Abu Dhabi - news breaks on the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. For Kakar, it means that the product programmes he has lined up, as well as his funding assumptions for Dunia, have crashed. Dunia A deals with the time frame before the launch of the company and covers factors such as pricing risk and uncertainty, along with a broader view that covers the struggles presented with new ventures and entrepreneurship.