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Surana & Surana International Attorneys (S&S) is a multispecialty law firm. Since its inception in 1971, it had declined to serve clients who were in the industries of meat, tobacco, alcohol, and gambling (M-TAG). In early March 2023, a large opportunity arose from a world leader in the alcohol business. Sanjay Mehta, Head of Business Development, met Vinod Surana, CEO and Partner at S&S, to convince him about bringing change to its deep-rooted tradition of sticking to no M-TAG. Kartik and Keerti,CEO's two sons would join S&S soon after finishing their legal education. Surana had a dilemma whether to stick to the existing business philosophy of "no M-TAG" clients or be flexible, considering growing competition and the business requirements.

Nykaa E-Retail Limited (Nykaa) has come a long way since its founding in 2012 by Falguni Nayar in Mumbai, India, establishing itself as a prominent participant in the e-commerce and retail industry. Not only has Nykaa revolutionized the field of online shopping in India for beauty and personal care products, but it has also played an essential role in the development of an ecosystem within that field. Nykaa has curated an offering of assorted beauty products spanning a variety of categories, including make-up, skincare, haircare, bath and body, fragrance, grooming equipment, personal care, and health and wellness. The company offers an enormous selection of over 2,400 legitimate brands. Nykaa has been able to maintain consistent growth because of its unrelenting concentration on the requirements of its customers and its close working relationships with other companies. However, feedback and reviews from customers have indicated a disconnect between client expectations and Nykaa’s performance. An increase in customer complaints, encompassing technical issues and problems related to customer assistance, exchanges, returns, and refunds—essentially, the entire customer experience—is revealing opportunities for improvement. Nykaa’s leadership has expressed concern over the increasing number of incidents of consumer dissatisfaction, an issue that is coming to light amid an increasingly competitive digital landscape.

This case study explores the various digital interventions (DIs) used by the Asude Foundation (Asude) in delivering education to students from low socio-economic sections in Aurangabad, India, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the impact on students' learning outcomes. Asude used an approach of recombining resources and leveraging the available digital and human capabilities, thus it provided a holistic and practical solution to the challenges created by the pandemic coupled with various institutional voids. The case study considers how Asude should plan in 2022 for growth and sustainability.

Nykaa E-Retail Limited (Nykaa) has come a long way since its founding in 2012 by Falguni Nayar in Mumbai, India, establishing itself as a prominent participant in the e-commerce and retail industry. Not only has Nykaa revolutionized the field of online shopping in India for beauty and personal care products, but it has also played an essential role in the development of an ecosystem within that field. Nykaa has curated an offering of assorted beauty products spanning a variety of categories, including make-up, skincare, haircare, bath and body, fragrance, grooming equipment, personal care, and health and wellness. The company offers an enormous selection of over 2,400 legitimate brands. Nykaa has been able to maintain consistent growth because of its unrelenting concentration on the requirements of its customers and its close working relationships with other companies. However, feedback and reviews from customers have indicated a disconnect between client expectations and Nykaa's performance. An increase in customer complaints, encompassing technical issues and problems related to customer assistance, exchanges, returns, and refunds-essentially, the entire customer experience-is revealing opportunities for improvement. Nykaa's leadership has expressed concern over the increasing number of incidents of consumer dissatisfaction, an issue that is coming to light amid an increasingly competitive digital landscape.

This case study explores the various digital interventions (DIs) used by the Asude Foundation (Asude) in delivering education to students from low socio-economic sections in Aurangabad, India, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the impact on students’ learning outcomes. Asude used an approach of recombining resources and leveraging the available digital and human capabilities, thus it provided a holistic and practical solution to the challenges created by the pandemic coupled with various institutional voids. The case study considers how Asude should plan in 2022 for growth and sustainability.

In February 2022, Sudhir Kumar Singh, head of human resources (HR) at Tata Steel Limited (Tata Steel)—one of India’s oldest and largest steel producers—was meeting with the vice president of HR to discuss how a unique pilot project to employ transgender people at the mine could be rolled out across the entire company. The long-term objective of the initiative was to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and contribute toward achieving a 25 percent diverse workforce by 2025. Although the pilot project had been successful, how could the HR team now scale up the transgender initiative across Tata Steel? Singh understood that to overcome these challenges he needed to adopt a multi-stakeholder approach, plan holistically, and integrate all the learnings from the pilot project to create a clear, consistent, and comprehensive plan that could be discussed with the vice president of HR.

MedoPlus is a startup working in the space of rural health care in India. Its pilot is currently running in five districts near Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh. The MedoPlus model connects villagers to the nearest health-care facility through an app mediated by a local villager, the MedoMITR. In only 18 months, the company has managed to reach 200,000 registered customers with 50,000 patients accessing health-care facilities. The management team at MedoPlus are planning for the next growth phase and considering the challenges ahead to obtain Series A funding for the company's expansion.

MedoPlus is a startup working in the space of rural health care in India. Its pilot is currently running in five districts near Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh. The MedoPlus model connects villagers to the nearest health-care facility through an app mediated by a local villager, the MedoMITR. In only 18 months, the company has managed to reach 200,000 registered customers with 50,000 patients accessing health-care facilities. The management team at MedoPlus are planning for the next growth phase and considering the challenges ahead to obtain Series A funding for the company’s expansion.

In February 2022, Sudhir Kumar Singh, head of human resources (HR) at Tata Steel Limited (Tata Steel)-one of India's oldest and largest steel producers-was meeting with the vice president of HR to discuss how a unique pilot project to employ transgender people at the mine could be rolled out across the entire company. The long-term objective of the initiative was to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and contribute toward achieving a 25 percent diverse workforce by 2025. Although the pilot project had been successful, how could the HR team now scale up the transgender initiative across Tata Steel? Singh understood that to overcome these challenges he needed to adopt a multi-stakeholder approach, plan holistically, and integrate all the learnings from the pilot project to create a clear, consistent, and comprehensive plan that could be discussed with the vice president of HR.

In March 2023, the Adani Group experienced a sharp decline in market value, losing over $150 billion. This downturn followed allegations from US short-seller Hindenburg Research, which accused Gautam Adani of inflating his net worth to $120 billion over three years, mainly through a dramatic rise in the stock prices of the group's key companies. The Adani Group disputed these stock manipulation allegations, citing a misunderstanding of Indian laws, highlighting also their consistent debt reduction over the past decade. The challenge for the Adani Group now lies in regaining stakeholder confidence and managing the crisis, which may include re-evaluating its corporate governance practices and revising its communication strategy to restore its image.

The Gautrain Rapid Rail Link Project was started in 2006. It is a rare example of a successful public-private partnership (PPP). The project involved the provincial government of Gauteng (represented by Gautrain Management Agency) as the public partner and Bombela Concession Company as the private partner. The general case, which accompanies this part in the exercise series, provides the basic outline of the story. The Gautrain Rapid Rail Link Project is recognized as one of the largest transport infrastructure PPP projects in Africa and as a major transport initiative of the provincial government of Gauteng. It has been breaking new ground to ensure that specific socio-economic development objectives are met. This project has set a benchmark for South Africa that can be adopted by other infrastructure providers.

(B) supplement to case 923301.

Contrary to the typical practice of cutting operating expenses by compromising on employees' benefits, the chairman of Zentaku Kogyo Company Ltd. (Zentaku), David Wu Chongrang, aimed to improve the standard of living of his staff by steadily raising their salaries and benefits. In fact, the key performance indicator David had set for himself was to raise his employees' salaries regularly to a preset target benchmark. Contrary to conventional approaches, over the past sixteen years (2006-2022) David had reduced Zentaku's revenue by 28 per cent and the number of employees by two-thirds, while raising the annual gross profit per employee to 239 per cent. Zentaku had achieved more with less by transforming itself through the rigorous implementation of lean production, inspired by the famed Toyota Production System, but Zentaku's future leadership now faced challenges in sustaining the success Zentaku had achieved. Were the management methods adopted in the past applicable to the younger generation of workers? How could the current management pass the enterprise to the younger generation while ensuring employees remained fulfilled in the workplace?

The case examines the transformation of Best Buy under CEO Hubert Joly's leadership from 2012. Facing significant business challenges, including competition from online and physical retailers, Joly implemented the "Renew Blue" turnaround strategy, which focused on improving price competitiveness, enhancing the customer experience both in-store and online, partnering with major tech companies, and investing in employee training and engagement. The case further explores the development and execution of the "Building the New Blue" strategy, aiming to enrich lives through technology by addressing key human needs and expanding services such as in-home advisors and entering the health care market. The case highlights the approach Joly calls "Unleashing Human Magic," which focuses on the importance of aligning company purpose with employee motivation and customer needs to drive business growth and transformation.

Within a single year, Lebanon experienced multiple adversities, from the economic crisis in October 2019, to the COVID-19 pandemic, to the Port of Beirut explosion on August 4, 2020. Many start-ups had to shut down during this period. This case investigates the role of organizational culture in how Toters Delivery, a high-tech Lebanese-based start-up, responded to these challenges and adapted its business model to overcome adversity. Its co-founder believed that organizational culture was a key factor in its survival. The case examines questions such as: How can a start-up maintain its culture in the face of grand challenges? and What strategic changes does a start-up need to make during challenging times, and how?

At a conference in November 2020, the chief executive officers (CEOs) of two exceptional healthcare start-ups—AliveCor Inc. (AliveCor) and Neurobit Inc. (Neurobit)—discussed their paths to innovation: AliveCor, a trailblazing health tech company, had emerged in 2011 with electrocardiogram (ECG) hardware and software that had since garnered global recognition. Neurobit, a digital health start-up, entered the scene in 2018 with sleep biomarker–based health analytics that could predict adverse cardiopulmonary or neurological outcomes. As the CEOs shared their stories, common challenges emerged regarding data acquisition, privacy concerns, and regulatory compliance. Amid their successes, the two companies experienced the necessity of addressing data challenges to achieve AI’s full potential in healthcare. They made trade-offs between time and resources amid a rapidly evolving industry and employed various strategies and solutions, from academic collaborations to extensive data collection, in their quest to determine the best strategy to use to overcome the challenges of efficiently and cost-effectively acquiring and utilizing data to drive innovation and gain a competitive edge.

Fastech Fashions Private Ltd. was founded in Rourkela, India in 2017 with the goal to elevate the livelihoods of traditional Odia weavers. By 2022 the company had experienced notable success, focusing on T-shirts, school uniforms, traditional handicraft products, professional attire, and athleisure. However, tension between the investors and one of the owners grew when the owner's commitment to reinvesting in weavers for broader societal impact interfered with the company's profits. Balancing profitability and philanthropy became a critical challenge. The emotional and logical complexities of decision-making had to be made while under constant pressure from investors. Strategic choices needed to be considered, as well as the delicate balance between business success and social impact.

The loss of the lease at their Michelin-starred Cyrus 1.0 in Sonoma County, California gives the partners an opportunity to shut down and rework a "broken" business model, one with labor intensive experiences six or seven nights a week, high burnout, high turnover-especially in the back of the house, low profits, and a lack of work-life balance. The case illustrates a novel planning process centered around (1) rethinking a gourmet dining experience using a model of how people entertain at home and (2) defining what people hate about something (in this case their jobs) and using that as a basis for describing an ideal solution before considering how to get there. The planning process still has to deal with the issues of work-life balance and how to achieve a three-day weekend for everyone and still reward investors.

The objective of improved work-life balance is achieved. However, it prompts a discussion of whether management should take on special events during what is now a long weekend in order to improve the bottom line even more. The case raises questions about other businesses to which the Cyrus planning process and profit model can be applied.

Fastech Fashions Private Ltd. was founded in Rourkela, India in 2017 with the goal to elevate the livelihoods of traditional Odia weavers. By 2022 the company had experienced notable success, focusing on T-shirts, school uniforms, traditional handicraft products, professional attire, and athleisure. However, tension between the investors and one of the owners grew when the owner's commitment to reinvesting in weavers for broader societal impact interfered with the company's profits. Balancing profitability and philanthropy became a critical challenge. The emotional and logical complexities of decision-making had to be made while under constant pressure from investors. Strategic choices needed to be considered, as well as the delicate balance between business success and social impact.