Dinesh Agarwal and Brijesh Agrawal ("DA & BA") established IndiaMART with around US$1100 savings in 1996. By 2014, "IndiaMART.com is India's largest online marketplace for Small & Medium Size Businesses". Its revenue for the year ended March 2014 reached US$32 million. "The company offers a platform & tools to over 1.5 million suppliers to generate business leads from over 10 million buyers... (It) has over 2600 employees located across 40+ offices in the country". In keeping with its growth plans, the company evaluates various capital raising activities from time to time, including public or private placement opportunities. Factors that would benefit the company's valuation include a strong track record of year-on-year growth, a sustainable revenue basis from diversified product categories, a strong, huge, and active user base, and a solid conversion rate of buyer- leads to revenue dollars for its suppliers. The downside, though, is that the company has not been generating operational profits for five years since 2010. From scratch to US$32 million revenue, DA & BA have led the company's many evolutions; what are the major considerations in building the present business model? How do they ensure the development of strong networks in every product category of the multiple-sided platform? One criticism of IndiaMART's weakness is easy replicability - what is the founders' response in mitigating risks presented by this weakness? What should IndiaMART do to attract a fair valuation?

In August 2013, the United States Securities and Exchanges Commission ("SEC") opened a bribery investigation into JPMorgan's "princeling hiring" practices in Hong Kong, China's Special Administrative Region. The investment bank's Hong Kong operation hired the daughter of a senior official of the state-owned China Railway Group ("CRG") in 2007, and the son of the chairman of state-owned China Everbright Group ("Everbright") in 2010. Months after the 2007 hiring, JPMorgan successfully secured the job of underwriting CRG's initial public offering ("IPO"). Similarly, although few business deals between JPMorgan and Everbright and its subsidiaries were made before 2010, JPMorgan then successfully secured several financial advisory jobs for the company. The US Security Exchange Commission's subsequent investigation put investment bank efforts to build "guanxi" in China by hiring princelings in the spotlight.

China's healthcare reforms in the 1980s left the country's hospitals under-subsidized and its medical officials underpaid. Hospitals relied on profits generated from the provision of medical services to cover the funding gap, while doctors became kickback seekers to make up for their low rates. In traditional markets, global pharmaceutical companies ("pharm companies") are no strangers to wooing hospitals and doctors to favor prescriptions of their drugs. These questionable "marketing" practices were taken to the next level in the China market. Streams of financial flows, legal or not, from pharm companies to hospitals and doctors to win their favor in prescribing their drugs became a structurally embedded problem of the country's healthcare system. The Chinese government introduced a new round of reform in 2009. While it promises to spend millions more on healthcare, its action to wipe out bribery and other kickback-seeking behaviors of the industry left many players perplexed. The first to take the heat was GlaxoSmithKline Inc. ("GSK"), a large British pharm company active in the China market since 1984. In July 2013, the Chinese government launched an investigation on GSK's China operation regarding its activities that lure hospitals doctors and administers to buy GSK drugs. The alleged practice of bribery is an industry open secret common to pharm companies. Is this investigation an indication that the Chinese government is targeting multinationals in favor of local players? Despite high-voltage growth rates, this regulated industry in the market economy with Chinese characteristics only has a bare-boned distributions infrastructure, while it is filled with patient-trying administrative hurdles, has price restrictions on an expanded list of drugs, and offers weak institutional protection for companies' intellectual property. Will long-term investment in the country pay off? Should GSK continue its China business? Should it change its strategy in China?

Within four weeks of becoming the new CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella lays out the major challenges that await him in the two letters he sends to everyone at Microsoft. He defines Microsoft's battlefield as the "mobile-first and cloud-first world". That is where Microsoft needs to get its products and technology right, to build platforms and ecosystems and to integrate Nokia devices, services and the new mobile capabilities. In order to do so, Microsoft needs to zero in on "a mobile and cloud-first world and do new things." In his view "...industry does not respect tradition - it only respects innovation". And in order to innovate, he needs his 125,000 strong staff around the world to lead and help drive cultural change, to find Microsoft's swing so that the team is "...in such perfect unison that no single action by any one is out of synch with those of all the others". Many challenges await Microsoft in its transformation journey. On platforms, it is not clear what the future will hold for Windows. On devices, Microsoft needs to find ways to woo application developers to build its mobile ecosystem. On integration, the Company has to find ways to transfer and to grow the mobile capability acquired from Nokia. And most importantly, Nadella must figure out how he can achieve cultural changes to focus everyone on innovation via collaboration.

China, an internet walled garden, has offered opportunities to its home-bred companies to thrive. These local internet companies, which earned their initial success mostly by cloning their Western counterparts in fulfilling the needs of the country's demanding internet users, are insulated from the rest of the virtual world. Among these local internet companies, Tencent is the most successful one. A listed company on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange since 2004, Tencent's 2011 annual report recorded revenue of RMB25.8 billion with an almost 40% profit margin. Its 845 million active user accounts have wide penetration to the 538 million internet users and 1.05 billion mobile users. After achieving sustainable success in China's internet market, Tencent has its eyes on the world. But as a company nurtured by the walled-garden environment, how can it make its way outside of its comfort zone? What does it have to offer to the global market, with its pockets of look-alike internet services, that the rest of the world is not deprived of? Will Tencent be able to globalise?

iBakery is the name of two social enterprises ("SEs")-a bakery shop and a café-established by Tung Wah Group of Hospitals (TWGH) of Hong Kong with a social mission to train and employ people with disabilities through the production and retailing of bakery products and the operation of a café. The SEs originated from a bakery workshop that trained people with disabilities. In running the SEs, more business elements have been introduced to try to fulfil both social and economic goals. iBakery is unique among SEs operated by Hong Kong's non-governmental organisations ("NGOs") in that it has a group of business professionals, called "iBakery Angels", forming an advisory board. With TWGH as their strong backup, the iBakery SEs are striving to meet the double bottom line. The SEs' performance in meeting the economic goal is far from satisfactory, as they are presently loss-making operations; however, they are achieving good performance in meeting the social mission when measured in terms of the Social Impact Assessment Tool. This case sheds light on the operations of SEs, how they attempt to strike a balance on both economic and social goals, and how performance measurement of social enterprises may be conducted. It also allows students to examine what the SEs should do to achieve sustainability in the future.