Jayalaxmi Agrotech (JAT) is a company based out of a small village called H.B. Halli in Bellary district of Karnataka, which helps farmers in availing correct and timely information at their fingertips using mobile technology. JAT created a mobile app which can be used to access information about various crop varieties, diseases, fertilizers, and pesticides and other details on irrigation, micronutrients, etc. This app pushes data on almost real-time basis to a server regarding the features accessed by the farmers from the app. This data can be analyzed to assess the usage of the app and some of the attributes can act as proxy data to understand prevalent diseases and the varieties of crops grown in specific areas. Anand, the founder of JAT, wanted to understand this data and gain some valuable insights which could help farmers with decision making. The major dilemma for Anand was to either prove or disprove several claims about plant diseases that were prevalent among the farmers.

Spreadsheet supplement for case IMB731.

GoCoop is a four-year old start-up that is creating an international market for Indian artisanal products such as handlooms through a B2B e-commerce platform. The company, founded by Siva Reddy, a former technologist with managerial experience in India as well as abroad has received a round of angel funding, followed by a Series A round recently. It has pivoted (i.e., changed its business model) twice and is now poised for a phase of rapid growth. The case traces the history of the company and examines some of the critical choices made by the entrepreneur and his key learning experiences. The case is anchored on the next steps that GoCoop will have to undertake to meet its growth aspirations. It also provides an opportunity for the class to deliberate and reflect on the choices made by the company and the entrepreneur so far. The case is accompanied by a background note on the marketing of Indian handloom products from an earlier period prior to the advent of electronic commerce. Company videos and those of Indian artisans are also available on YouTube.

Aravind Eye Care Systems (Aravind) had started setting up vision centers (VC) in 2006 and 51 VCs were operational by March 2015. The location for each VC was chosen to ensure easy access for about 50,000 people across 15 to 20 villages within a 5-7 km radial distance. Each VC had a target of reaching at least 10% of the population, that is, around 5,000 patients, which served as a benchmark for penetration. Consultations related to eye care were provided at the VC. They also dispensed medicines and spectacles. The VC would facilitate arrangements for patients requiring surgeries at the base hospital, including their transport, food and any other reimbursement. Each VC had three key personnel - coordinator, ophthalmic technician, and field worker. The VC was equipped with basic ophthalmic equipment and internet connectivity. The presence of a permanent establishment, in the form of a VC, motivated people in rural areas to seek earlier treatment for vision problems. This helped in eliminating vision care problems and enabled them to get back to earning their livelihoods. The permanent setup also positively influenced the healthcare seeking behavior of the people. Most VCs had performed well, however some VCs were not attracting enough patients, thus not enabling Aravind's classic, volume-driven model, to work and support self-sustainable operations. Thulsiraj, Director of Aravind, was analyzing the performance of all VCs. How should he analyze the performance of VCs from a marketing perspective? Should he change the marketing strategies for those VCs which had attracted a very low number of patients and if yes, how will it be be designed, considering the unique market in which VC operates? Were the VCs innovative in their approach to reach out to patients? Were the VCs self-sustainable? What parameters should he use to evaluate the performance of VCs? How should he increase the number of patients at VCs?

Arthur Andersen collapsed in May 2002 and a significant part of Arthur Andersen India merged with Ernst & Young. Bobby Parikh, Mukesh Butani, Rajiv Dimri, Sanjay Mehta and Ajay Mehra, all of whom were senior leaders at Arthur Anderson, had joined Ernst & Young after the merger in various roles; however, they left one by one to establish a firm in their chosen practice areas, which would be differentiated by quality of thinking and enable clients to experience a different way of engagement execution. Thus, BMR Advisors was started to provide high quality professional services; wherein it wanted to differentiate itself and compete solely on quality. BMR started with services in three areas - Tax, Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) and Risk Advisory - a unique combination which could solve any business problem. Audit services and management consulting were deliberately not offered. BMR focused on maintaining a low leverage ratio, that is, the number of team members per partner, to ensure higher amount of partner time on each assignment. BMR Advisors thus far had achieved success with its low leverage ratio, that is, partner to team members' ratio, which in turn had ensured higher quality of strategic inputs to complex client engagements and higher amount of partner face time with clients. With increased growth in recent times, maintaining a lower leverage ratio was becoming a challenge, since growth entailed more engagements and needed additional team members, which in turn diluted the leverage ratio. New partners had joined from other organization and ensuring a seamless integration of culture was another challenge. Developing the next set of leaders to take over the mantle from the founding partners was one more challenge to be dealt with. Besides these unique challenges, BMR advisors also faced regular challenges such as talent war, technology, undercutting by competition, etc.

Amable, a Bangalore-based children's education organization, was co-founded by Ratnesh and Aditi Mathur, a husband-wife duo who wanted to provide innovative education to children. Amable was started as Geniekids in 2002 at Indiranagar in Bangalore, which organized summer and weekend programs for children. Geniekids developed a Train The Trainer (TTT) program, which enabled a continuous stream of high quality faculty and also provided an additional revenue stream to the organization. By 2004, Geniekids had a critical mass of parents who were ready to enroll their children in a school based on Geniekids learning philosophy. Geniekids initiated full-time learning programs for pre-primary children; and by 2009, this was expanded to children in 6-14 years age group through Aarohi Life Education. Aarohi operated as a trust and Geniekids continued to operate as a for-profit organization. In 2013 Geniekids renamed itself as ''Amable'', which was derived from the words ''I am able''. The core team at Amable believed that children have the ability to learn from and for life, and therefore have the capacity to make choices on what, when, how, and how much they want to learn. Amable envisioned an ideal learning environment to be a place where the child chooses his/her goals (curriculum), paces him(her)self, and assesses him(her) self vis-à-vis his (her) goals. Amable had several programs, which enabled reaching out to children, parents, and teachers. Children's programs were designed to make learning a process of self-discovery. Other programs included TTT programs, parent counseling sessions, workshops for parents, etc. Changing demographics of Indiranagar had reduced the number of participants and Amable was actively looking at options such as conducting programs at residential complexes and company premises to increase its reach. Ratnesh and his team looked at the challenge of spreading ''organic education" in a sustainable manner.

Larsen and Toubro (L&T) was India's largest technology, engineering, construction and manufacturing company. Construction and Mining Business (CMB) sold equipment such as Dozer Shovels, Dozers, Dumpers, Hydraulic Excavators, Motor Graders, Pipe Layers, Surface Miners, Tipper Trucks, Wheel Dozers and Wheel Loaders. CMB also provided the services of equipment installation and commissioning and other maintenance services. Supply of spare parts was critical, since the customer faced severe losses in case of equipment unavailability. Forecasting was done on an ad hoc basis based on the experience of the planning personnel. The value of each spare part ranged from INR 10 to INR 8 Million. It was critical to maintain a correct balance for the spare-parts inventories, since unavailability led to loss of revenues, decreased profitability, customer dissatisfaction and also gave rise to the fake products industry. Excess inventory led to high inventory carrying costs, working capital lock-in and also a possibility of spare parts becoming obsolete. Vijaya Kumar, Deputy General Manager of CMB, had to arrive at a forecasting methodology with an error of less than 10% for the 20,000 odd spare-parts. This warranted for 20,000 forecasting models, however this was not only very time consuming but also very expensive to develop and manage. Kumar wanted to build the forecasting model quickly so that he could roll out the forecasting strategy on a pan-India basis within a few weeks.

Spreadsheet supplement for IMB499.

Ami Shah, founder of IntelliAssist, helped clients to create social media marketing strategies for their products or services and assisted them in the execution of these campaigns. In 2012, Shah had designed the social media marketing campaign for the Bollywood movie ''1920 Evil Returns'', which was a sequel to the movie 1920 that was released in 2008. The next movie in the 1920 franchise was expected to be released in 2014. She was analyzing the impact of the campaign and wondered whether the right social media mix had been used. The social media campaign for 1920 evil returns was very successful and she had the numbers to show for it. Active fan engagement and positive word-of-mouth also validated the success of the social media campaign. However, Shah wondered whether she could have done it differently. Was the spending-mix effective? What strategy should she adopt for the next movie in the franchisee tentatively titled, ''1920 London''? Ami had used a mix of social media for running the 1920 Evil Returns campaign which ran for 45 days. Facebook and YouTube were primarily used for the social media campaign. Google Ads were used on popular Bollywood websites such as Bollywood Hungama, SantaBanta along with news websites such as India times, Hindustan Times and Rediff.com. Total social media spend was INR 0.95 million. Ami had to decide on the next movie's 1920 London digital marketing strategy based on the analysis of 1920 Evil Returns.

Dr. Ananth Rao, who heads the Quality Department at Apollo Hospitals, Bangalore, had undertaken initiatives to measure and benchmark the hospitality services at the hospital. In-patients spend around 80% of their time under the care of the staff from different departments such as nursing, housekeeping, food & beverages, operations, and so on. The Quality team at Apollo Bangalore received 1,434 complaints from the 1,38,600 in-patients treated between March 2011 and December 2012. The feedback was generally open-ended, in the form of patients' comments, opinions, or suggestions. Of the 1,434 complaints received, the housekeeping department received the maximum number of complaints, while the dietary service had the least number. Some of the complaints were genuine concerns, while some were related to minor discomfort. Some of the complaints were very specific, while some were generic. All of these were analyzed, which would enable the hospital to work towards reducing the overall number of complaints. Text analytics was used to analyze the open-ended complaints. In order to gain deeper insights, "Defect-Defective" techniques were used to identify the processes that caused the defects. The processes were re-engineered to eliminate all the defects and a pilot study was done using the "Define Measure Analyse Improve and Control" (DMAIC) cycle. Dr. Rao and his team have developed benchmarks for several common complaints with three levels of service by adopting the Kano model. Critical to Quality (CTQ) metrics have been defined and Sigma levels were calculated for each CTQ. Dr Rao is pondering on what is a good Sigma score target to set given the importance of hospitality in Apollo Hospitals.