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Faraaz Usmani, heir to the family-owned Herbo Drugs & Pharmaceuticals, a small private Unani pharmaceutical company in Prayagraj, India, planned to expand the company’s business to other states to cover most parts of India. Before implementing this ambitious plan, Faraaz needed to conduct a feasibility study by applying some popular capital budgeting tools such as net present value, internal rate of return, and profitability index. He first projected the cash flows for ten years with an initial investment of ₹6.5 million financed with 80 per cent equity and 20 per cent debt. He expected sales to grow by 15 per cent annually for the next five years, 10 per cent from year 6 to year 10, and a perpetual growth rate of 5 per cent afterward. Faraaz understood that the estimation of the cost of capital was a key step in his analysis. He discovered that finding the cost of equity for a private firm was tricky because stock return information was not available to estimate beta. The case introduces the basics of cost of capital (i.e., weighted average cost of capital) and capital budgeting. It focuses on the details of how to estimate the cost of equity for a private firm.

In March 2023, the co-founder of Rangoli Group of Institutes, Prahar Anjaria, was contemplating expanding his educational venture across the country. Founded in 2009 in Vadodara, Gujarat, India, the organization was a successful and award-winning preschool chain. The company was focused on imparting holistic learning with high moral, ethical, and pedagogical insight, as well as giving back to society through various social and cultural settings. With an evolving educational marketplace and new government regulations, Anjaria was wondering if this was the right time to expand across the country. What would be the impact of national expansion? How could he be sure to retain the core educational philosophy that made Rangoli Group of Institutes unique?

<p align="justify">The Gurmukh Singh Technology (GST) group, based in Ludhiana, Punjab, India, manufactured high-precision machined parts and sheet-metal components for various industries and sectors such as agriculture and horticulture. Revenues of the group had dipped substantially in 2018 due to non-receipt of payments from some customers, and the situation was compounded by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. In January 2022, the managing director and head of marketing was planning a restructuring drive with the intention of doubling revenues and increasing the profitability of the group by 50 per cent over the next five years. He had to decide whether to reframe the group’s business-to-business marketing strategy and, if so, in what respect. How should he segment customers and select the most appropriate segments? How could he incentivize these customers to buy his company’s products rather than those of competitors? What should be the value proposition of the company?

<p align="justify">Two months after his January 1, 2021, appointment as chief executive officer (CEO) of NewCo, the code name for the soon-to-be spun off managed infrastructure services portion of International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), Martin Schroeter was faced with the daunting prospect of creating a distinct strategy and identity for a huge company in a very short time frame. Announced on October 8, 2020, by IBM’s CEO, Arvind Krishna, NewCo was a high-stakes strategic move to “create value through focus” and “increased agility to focus on evolving customer needs and delivery excellence.” Once spun off, NewCo would immediately become the world’s leading managed infrastructure services provider, with US$19 billion in revenue, 90,000 employees, and 4,600 customers, including more than 75 per cent of the Fortune 100 across 115 countries. With the spinoff expected to be complete by the end of 2021, Schroeter had only a few months to craft a strategy, recruit a leadership team, define a new identity for the company, ensure a “strong strategic relationship” with IBM, and bring thousands of customers and tens of thousands of employees into NewCo. Success required many pieces to come together rapidly and seamlessly. Schroeter was unsure how best to address these challenges. All he knew was that failure was not an option and that time was short.

In 2006, two entrepreneurs founded Fugumobile Co. Ltd., a digital marketing agency based in Shanghai, China. The company grew organically in China by adapting to the evolving trends in digital marketing. In May 2021, the founders were facing a dilemma and had to choose between two options for sustainable and profitable growth of their company. The first option was to reach an extensive client base by continuing to deliver standardized services at affordable prices, which offered the company modest growth and profitability. The second option was to offer customized services at a premium price, which was more rewarding but would require recruiting experienced workers with a proven track record for selling and delivering high quality customized services, who were typically employed by large agencies and demanded significantly high salaries. The two founders had to decide which path to take.

<p align="justify">Sunil Koshy considered himself a “passionpreneur;” after quitting a well-paid job as a software engineer, he chased his passion for singing and founded From Mug to Mike (FMTM), a start-up that helped amateur singers polish their singing skills. Stemming from Koshy’s passion, FMTM had evolved into a business venture with viable products, services, and a scalable business model. To scale up FMTM, Koshy needed to decide whether the business should take a geography- or a product-led route.

The farmer producer company (FPC) Sahyadri Farmer Producer Company Ltd. (Sahyadri Farms) commenced with a mission of safeguarding fair compensation to the small landholding farmers of India in exchange for their produce and hard labour. Sahyadri Farms was a market leader in grape exports, especially to Europe, but when export freight charges shot up dramatically due to the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the company was forced to enter into the domestic market to survive. The company’s domestic business, Sahyadri Supply Chain Company Ltd., had very high operating costs compared to those of local intermediaries, who operated without the same professionals, standardized logistics, or software. The company was rigorously partnering with young innovators to incorporate technologies like blockchain into the agricultural sector, and it needed a new business model. However, as a company in a low-profitability sector with jobs that were not lucrative and were situated in remote locations, it faced challenges in attracting and retaining the young talent it needed to support the growth of an increasingly complex business in the domestic market.

This case has been written for use in undergraduate- and graduate-level modules pertaining to equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts. Particularly, it can be introduced in organizational behaviour, leadership, and communication courses. It is recommended that this case be taught early in the course or program.<br><br>This case involves international students’ experiences while studying at Canadian universities. The case is written to discuss the unique challenges international students face when entering a new country to study and intends to start the dialogue between domestic and international students to ensure that all students feel included in the cultures they are exposed to. This case will encourage students to be mindful of non-inclusive actions and behaviours (unintentional or otherwise) and their consequences, and then provide appropriate communication strategies and starting solutions to make students feel welcome and heard.

This case examines how a social enterprise, Longevity Design House (LDH) in HK, has transformed its business model several times to balance creating social value and generating profit. With the rapid growth of an aging society in HK, the social mission of LDH is to help seniors live a decent life through home renovation, interior design, and product specifications. The company originated by upcycling leftover brand-new construction materials to reduce environmental waste. The company also utilized the internet of things (IoT) technology to offer a location tracking system for guardians to detect when their seniors were at risk. After several stages of transformation, the company has recently developed plans to expand products to include a wearable device to help seniors receive health alerts regarding their physical condition from healthcare professionals. However, a promising senior-friendly furniture line also requires further investment. It then raises the question of how much a social enterprise should scale up its business for profit. This case illustrates the tension between its mission and growth as a social enterprise.

This case focuses on the use of modern data analytics to alleviate crowding at the branches of United Overseas Bank, a full-service bank headquartered in Singapore. The case is set in 2020 against the backdrop of the COVID-19 global pandemic when vaccines were not yet available and social distancing was a key tool in the fight against the spread of the disease. How should the bank develop and deploy predictive analytics to accurately anticipate future branch crowds? How should the bank trade off key design considerations?

Origo Commodities Indian Pvt. Ltd. (Origo) had grown to achieve revenue of US$40 million in just a decade, making it one of the leading players in India’s agricultural commodity sector. The co-founders had explored various avenues to accelerate growth but had repeatedly encountered employees’ discomfort with implementing technology. By 2020, with emerging competition, growing investor interest, and the movement of government processes to online platforms, they needed to take tough decisions now to grow further. Would restructuring the organization and hiring technology-proficient replacements be their only option? Since the employees had been with Origo since its inception, replacing them would be an agonizing decision. The founders had to decide what to do and how to do it before their investors’ meeting in four weeks.

The co-founders of The Graph Foundation had experienced first-hand how difficult it was to create new Web3 applications without easy access to blockchain data: There was no indexing and querying software for blockchain, and developers had to find their own method for collecting and transforming data from different sources. The Graph was an indexing protocol designed to solve this issue and become the nascent "Google Search" for the metaverse. With a recent investment giving it an opportunity to increase its revenue while improving the value proposition, The Graph had to decide which business model to adopt: Should The Graph implement a protocol-to-user model to attract everyday users, or stay with its current protocol-to-developer model? If it implemented a the former, should it develop its own search feature, or collaborate with a partner (or set of partners) to this achieve this goal? What role should this feature play in The Graph’s broader strategy and within the wider Web3 ecosystem?

<p style="color: rgb(197, 183, 131);"><strong> AWARD WINNER - African Business Cases Category at European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) Case Writing Competition</strong></p><br>On January 20, 2022, Shamini Harrington, vice president for climate change at Sasol Limited (Sasol), considered the recent announcement that the company had reaffirmed its commitment to climate change management. As she looked through the plans in place, she reflected back to Sasol’s evolution as an organization and its role within South Africa, and considered the complexities involved in the process of a just transition. Two questions particularly resonated with her as she thought of the report she needed to provide to her management in the next three months: What were the implications for a just energy transition in a developing country like South Africa? and, How should Sasol work with stakeholders who often held differing perspectives?

The case features Ina Botha, executive director for South Africa-based Commercial Cold Storage and Logistics (CCS Logistics), critically reflecting on the lessons learned during her tenure leading the organization. Botha initiated and led a three-and-a-half-year culture change journey, which helped improve accountability and results. Now that she was considering a larger role within the organization’s parent company, Oceana Group, she reflected on whether the new culture had been embedded within CCS Logistics and if it would be sustainable in a new era under different leadership. What should she recommend the incoming joint executive directors of the business continue to do or do differently to ensure the new culture supported the business in achieving its strategic objectives?

In March of 2021, the management consulting division of Global Consulting Company Canada was preparing to hold its biannual performance review call for consulting analysts hired in September 2019. The analysts had been unable to complete their traditional two-year rotational development program, which meant that no promotion would normally be recommended on this call. However, extraordinary circumstances caused by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 made two analysts from this class stand out above the rest. The senior manager of the two high performers was planning to challenge the firm’s strict requirements for promoting analysts. She wanted to keep her two high-performing analysts motivated and to fast-track their careers. Her presentation at the upcoming performance review call would be a key factor in the firm’s decision.

Finbook Pte. Ltd. (FinBook), a financial technology (fintech) start-up, started in July 2017 in Singapore as a decentralized marketplace for structured products on the blockchain. The founders obtained seed funding of approximately US$200,000 that allowed it to introduce and incorporate structured funds, short sales, and financial options in the crypto space using smart contracts under the distributed ledger system.<br><br>In May 2018, FinBook launched a private cornerstone round of token financing and obtained $3.5 million worth of Ethereum. However, the cryptocurrency market plunged in 2018. As a result, the founders needed to discuss their options: Should they postpone the public initial coin offering (ICO) planned for September 2018, or should they consider another round of venture capital (VC) equity financing while waiting for a better time for the ICO?

After COVID-19 lockdowns delayed its first public theatre performance in April 2020, the Bombay Theatre Company (BTC) turned to virtual performances on various online platforms, establishing an international presence and casting international artists. In May 2022, the company’s founder reflected on the human resources and business challenges he had faced in his short entrepreneurial journey. These included limited resources for talent acquisition, an overreliance on social media as a hiring source, and difficulties in retaining gig workers, as well as tepid corporate responses to BTC’s theatre-based interventions and a lack of financial resources and clear revenue model. BTC’s founder needed to determine the best business model to generate a steady flow of revenue and to envisage a clear growth path, and he knew he would have to choose between virtual and in-person shows as well as between theatre and film. Overall, BTC had built itself a strong foundation during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it now sought to leverage that base to build a compelling employee value proposition and attract the talent it needed to become profitable.</p>

Early in 2020, la Fundación Delirio (Delirio), a salsa dance, music, and circus arts show from Cali, Colombia, faced the abrupt and indefinite suspension of its presentations because of lockdowns associated with COVID-19. The general director and the staff who remained had to find new ways to connect with their audiences, relying on the strength of the brand, which help them stay afloat despite restrictions on live performances. However, when considering some of the alternatives to live performances, the general director also wondered about brand management: What impact might these short-term survival strategies have on the brand? What was going to happen to the artists?

Hillel International was founded in the United States in 1929 as a non-profit organization, with a mission to enrich the lives of Jewish students so that they may enrich the Jewish people and the world. By 2021, it had grown into the world’s largest Jewish college campus organization with over US$50 million in revenue and had achieved international recognition by connecting students at colleges and universities around the world. In August 2021, the newly appointed brand director was challenged with developing a new digital marketing strategy in the throes of rising antisemitism. Her campaign had to be educational and engaging, and should empower Jewish students on campus to act: involving other Jewish students and fostering a feeling of inclusivity for all. The brand director had much to prepare and needed to outline how Hillel International should embark on a marketing campaign during the fourth quarter of 2021.

Karen Wonders founded Maple Tree Cancer Alliance (MTCA) in 2011 as a non-profit organization in Dayton, Ohio, to improve cancer patients’ quality of life through an individualized exercise program. By early 2020, MTCA had enjoyed significant growth, crossing the geographical and administrative boundaries of several hospital networks in the United States. Funding from hospital networks was contingent upon the efficacy of MTCA’s exercise program, which could be established only through ongoing, rigorous data analysis. However, the old way of collecting and processing client data could not adapt to MTCA’s current size; as such, MTCA needed a new solution, and Wonders found herself reviewing four options.