Mylab Discovery Solutions is a biotechnology firm based in Pune, Maharashtra, a state in the western part of India. The company is focused on developing and commercializing diagnostic solutions and automation in molecular, serology, and immunology areas. Its applications are in clinical diagnostics, drug discovery, biomedical research, agri genomics, and animal and food safety. Till early 2020, like any other young venture in a nascent market, Mylab was struggling to raise funds and spread awareness of high-priced but more accurate "molecular diagnostics" in a price-sensitive market. Its fortunes changed in March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. The firm was dubbed the "poster child of the COVID-19 pandemic" after it rose to the limelight for developing COVID-19 RTPCR and rapid antigen test kits. The next two years saw it raising funds, automating and scaling production, doubling down on research and development, launching multiple new products, and pursuing inorganic growth through acquisitions and alliances. However, by January 2022, the pandemic seemed to have run its course. The founders, Hasmukh Rawal and Shailendra Kawade, were considering strategies to maintain Mylab's growth momentum. Through a series of interviews with key players at Mylab, we have developed a case study to delve into how a startup in the nascent biotechnology industry in India succeeded in turning out innovation after innovation and scaling up production of test kits from a few hundred to hundreds of thousands in the span of a few months. The learning objectives of this case are to understand the unique challenges faced by ventures in nascent markets, compare the ecosystem of ventures in nascent industries with those in mature industries, and discuss how stakeholder relationships evolve as a venture advances in its journey.

Meesho is a three-part case that highlights the ups and downs, and the twists and turns, of a typical entrepreneurial journey. It follows the experiences and decisions of Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, two IIT Delhi graduates, as they build their venture - Meesho. The idea that they begin with, morphs substantially as they go through the process of finding a product-market fit. Each time they face a hurdle, they dig deeper into the needs and challenges of their customers, until they arrive at what could potentially be product-market fit. Even then, they struggle to monetize and decide to pivot yet again, in order to unlock the value created by their venture. The case provides rich material to discuss the iterative, non-linear nature of venture building. It reinforces the importance of continuously measuring and responding to metrics.

Meesho is a three-part case that highlights the ups and downs, and the twists and turns, of a typical entrepreneurial journey. It follows the experiences and decisions of Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, two IIT Delhi graduates, as they build their venture - Meesho. The idea that they begin with, morphs substantially as they go through the process of finding a product-market fit. Each time they face a hurdle, they dig deeper into the needs and challenges of their customers, until they arrive at what could potentially be product-market fit. Even then, they struggle to monetize and decide to pivot yet again, in order to unlock the value created by their venture. The case provides rich material to discuss the iterative, non-linear nature of venture building. It reinforces the importance of continuously measuring and responding to metrics.

Meesho is a three-part case that highlights the ups and downs, and the twists and turns, of a typical entrepreneurial journey. It follows the experiences and decisions of Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, two IIT Delhi graduates, as they build their venture - Meesho. The idea that they begin with, morphs substantially as they go through the process of finding a product-market fit. Each time they face a hurdle, they dig deeper into the needs and challenges of their customers, until they arrive at what could potentially be product-market fit. Even then, they struggle to monetize and decide to pivot yet again, in order to unlock the value created by their venture. The case provides rich material to discuss the iterative, non-linear nature of venture building. It reinforces the importance of continuously measuring and responding to metrics.

The case describes the journey of Rashmi Vittal, founder of Little Green Kid (LGK), an organic clothing company based out of Bangalore, India. A big believer is sustainability business, Rashmi started LGK to create and retail a line of 100% organic clothing. A technology professional by training, she struggled to figure out the various aspects of the organic clothing business and painstakingly put together each piece of the puzzle. She built the business by using various means of bootstrapping - outsourcing, partnering, sharing capacity, and leveraging the support of friends and family. The case is positioned at a point where Rashmi has built a modest but cash flow positive business. She now needs to decide the future course of action for LGK, that is, if and how to grow the company to the next level. The case provides rich material to discuss the concept of bootstrapping; the challenges of building and scaling a venture that seeks to carve out a new market (organic clothing); the trade-off involved in seeking venture capital funding, especially for a sustainability business.

The case describes the journey of Rolocule, a mobile gaming company based out of Pune, India. An early entrant into the mobile gaming space, Rolocule's fortunes go through many ups and downs as the nascent mobile gaming industry experiments with various business models. Rolocule responds by being nimble and flexible, rapidly developing multiple games and pivoting as the industry changes. Product-market fit always seems within reach but each time, an external event derails the company's plans to scale. The case is positioned at a low-point in the company's journey where it must decide whether it wants to continue to play in the B2C gaming space or shift into the B2B space. The case provides rich material to discuss the challenges of building a venture in a rapidly evolving industry and analyze the consequences of adopting different business models.

Case A describes the challenges a multinational corporation, Cisco Systems Inc., faces in an emerging market in developing new products specific to local needs. Dr Ishwardutt Parulkar and his team at Cisco's Indian subsidiary in Bangalore had identified a promising concept that could potentially become the company's first product developed end-to-end at the India site. They had to address three critical issues: How to define the right product to address the specific needs of telecom network customers in the emerging market? How to build the business case for approval from the headquarters in the US? How to compensate for the significant gaps in the Indian ecosystem that was not fully mature in terms of partners and skills required to develop such a product? Case B presents how the Cisco team resolved the new product development challenges. The success of the new Advanced Services Router (ASR) 901 would mark a milestone in Cisco's journey of evolution of engineering capability in emerging countries into the next phase of innovation and thought leadership. Learning objectives: 1) Identify key challenges in developing a mainstream product from concept to completion in an emerging market. 2) Understand essential factors for building subsidiary R&D capabilities for mainstream product development. 3) Introduce the Technology Champion framework, which serves to bring out innovation aspirations in a subsidiary R&D team.

Case A describes the challenges a multinational corporation, Cisco Systems Inc., faces in an emerging market in developing new products specific to local needs. Case B describes the journey undertaken by Dr Ishwardutt Parulkar and his team in developing the Advanced Services Router (ASR) 901 - from idea to launch in 2011. The case helps to identify key success factors for new product development through a decentralized R&D model in emerging markets and to recognize the importance of the ecosystem for successful innovation. Learning objectives: 1) Identify key challenges in developing a mainstream product from concept to completion in an emerging market. 2) Understand essential factors for building subsidiary R&D capabilities for mainstream product development. 3) Introduce the Technology Champion framework, which serves to bring out innovation aspirations in a subsidiary R&D team.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. For more than a decade, multinational enterprises from developed countries have moved a substantial part of their R&D activity to emerging markets such as India and China. The location of R&D in developing countries was initially driven largely by the availability of skilled personnel at low cost. At first, these R&D centers in emerging markets operated primarily as extended arms of R&D in the home country, executing well-defined projects under close supervision from headquarters. However, the dynamics of multinationals'R&D centers are rapidly changing. Emerging markets are new growth drivers of the global economy, and their unique bundle of opportunities and challenges can be a wellspring of innovation for a multinational company. Simultaneously, many R&D centers in emerging markets have evolved to accumulate advanced technical capabilities, leading their employees to clamor for higher-value-added work and to seek responsibility for a complete product or technology. Given these trends, R&D subsidiaries in emerging markets are uniquely positioned to play an important role in multinational companies'innovation strategy. However, this thinking is often at odds with the dominant innovation mindset, structures, and processes within multinational companies based in developed countries. This article advances a framework that can be used by managers in multinational companies to support the key decisions on innovating for emerging markets. The framework is based on learnings gleaned from the successful development of the ASR 901 aggregation services routers, a product family that was conceptualized and developed by Cisco's India R&D center for emerging-market customers but was also adopted by global customers.