Case studies

BotGo was started in 2007 by Ravi Panchal, an engineer, after he lost motivation to continue at a managerial role at his job. A hands-on technical person, Panchal was inspired to create an underwater tank-cleaning robot. He started BotGo by bootstrapping it with his savings and roped in his friends for key positions in the company. He also started workshops for robotics education in colleges in order to sustain the company; he called this initiative BotLearn. In 2009, BotGo was incubated and Panchal started franchises for BotLearn as part of his growth plans. This led to a crisis within the company, escalating to a point where Panchal was forced to consider options.

This case highlights the importance of a product-to-market fit and examines the decision to franchise in view of the case facts. The case also points towards the mistakes in crisis management, with particular emphasis on channel management.

Towards the end of the case, Panchal is faced with a dilemma on whether to continue with the franchises or close them down. The dilemma is further accentuated since Panchal's decision would ultimately affect the growth of BotGo as well as directly challenge his intention to franchise.

This short case provides income statements and balance sheets for a recent year for 7 Indian firms from 7 industries in Exhibits 1 and 2. These firms belong to the following industries.1 Airline2. Banking 3. Information Technology Services 4. Liqour Producer 5. Oild Exploration and Development 6. Pharmaceutical 7. Retail. The task before the students is to evaluate the financial statements given in the exhibits and identify the appropriate industry for each firm.

Milaap is a popular medical crowdfunding platform in India, enabling interaction between those who want to raise funds and those who want to donate. To achieve the critical mass Milaap had to increase the trust among the donors and ensure a higher success rate of the campaigns. Milaap provided two types of services: Do it Yourself (DIY), and Supported Campaign (SC). Milaap charged 5% of the raised amount from the DIY campaigns and 15% of the raised amount from the SC. Overall the chances of success were high in the SC. The case explores the dilemma of type of service to be prioritized.

The case on Moodcafe captures the journey of the start-up and its entrepreneurs from the beginning till the fund-raising stage. The case brings forth critical decisions that each entrepreneur or the team of co-founders have to address during their start-up journey. This short case gives opportunity to delve into two aspects mainly a) As a founder, which investor should one choose for seeking funds and what should be the terms and conditions of investment? and b) How can one review and assess the business model of a start-up?

Incorporated on February 18, 1959, Oil India Ltd. (OIL) was a leading public sector oil and gas company involved in the exploration, development, production and transportation of crude oil and natural gas in India. Since its inception, OIL had committed itself to being a socially responsible organisation in and around operational areas, particularly the north-eastern state of Assam where 90% of company operations were concentrated. Despite many successes, the “People's Company” continued to be a target for disgruntled local and student communities who frequently created operational hazards for the firm—from sit-ins and blockades to pilfering and disrupting production facilities. No less than 400 organisations, of which 50-60 had been consistently active, were currently in the forefront of demanding something from OIL. Many of these demands were beyond the purview of OIL's CSR policy and focus areas. Additionally, being a Public Sector Undertaking (PSU), OIL also faced multiple demands from the government. On February 16, 2019, news arrived that there was yet another blockade in Duliajan, Assam. What should OIL do to address and possibly mitigate operational interruptions?

The pandemic induced lockdown lead to supply and manufacturing disruptions that were swiftly dealt with by the Indian Pharma Industry through successful industry-government collaboration. By May 2020 production was back to normal and exports were higher than the same period in May 2019. The case deals with the processes that enabled this to happen, the policy responses and the changes that happened in the period from March 2020 to August 2020.

Kaleidofin was co-founded in 2017 by Puneet Gupta and Sucharita Mukherjee; former CFO and CEO of IFMR (Institute for Financial Management and Research) Holdings Pvt Ltd. As part of their roles at IFMR, Gupta and Mukherjee focused on designing products and developing technology to push for financial inclusion. In their field interactions, the co-founders had an epiphany of the challenges faced by people while trying to save towards important life goals. They saw an opportunity in the large segment of financially under-served people in India and quit their jobs to start Kaleidofin. Kaleidofin was conceptualised as a digital platform that offers customised financial solutions to help customers meet their life goals. The start-up partnered with mutual fund companies for solutions on one hand and network partners (NGOs, microfinance organizations, cooperative banks) on the other for access to their existing customers.

Kaleidofin grew from 50 customers in January 2018 to 15,000 customers by March 2019. Aiming to grow to 1 million customers in the next 30 months Kaleidofin faces a dilemma about its future course. The start-up could continue to grow by expanding its current target segment which is the low-income households and preserve its vision at the risk of increasing costs. The second option would be to look at other potential target segments, such as, middle-income households and risk diluting their vision. The case study highlights the unique customer-centric model of Kaleidofin and the need for start-ups to understand the value proposition of their products/services.

The case revolves around a critical incident that took place at an Indian pharmaceutical company, in which various stakeholders had very different perspectives regarding the nature, causes and consequences of the incident. By illustrating the contrasting perceptions of the same event, the authors have shed light on the nature of perception and perceptual processes, including cognitive biases and errors in human judgement. The case provides insights into how these manifest in the organisational context and how managers could be made more aware of them to avoid errors in judgment and make choices that are more informed.

This case describes the evolution of MHFC, a player in the Indian informal housing sector. As a new entrant offering micro home loans to the financially excluded lower income families of urban India in 2008, MHFC had grown to an annual number of 18,000 loans worth INR 8 billion with an average ticket size of INR 0.43 million (USD 6,000).

With a 53.5% purchasable equity stake in MHFC, Chopra and his team were left with certain decisions to make. Should the company on-board a new social investor? Or should it bring on the more readily available and capital-rich private equity investors interested in the lucrative prospects of the microfinance housing sector?

The case discusses two key objectives: (1) to understand the entire entrepreneurial journey of a group of entrepreneurs and how they plan to exit the venture, and (2) to enable classroom discussion on how to develop a business model from scratch, get it funded, achieve scale and then exit.

This case is the first of a three-part series that follows the managerial, strategic, and communications decisions of the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) or Clean India Mission, the flagship programme of the Government of India to eliminate the practice of open defecation (i.e., not using a toilet) from 2014 to 2019. As of 2014, 550 million people in India practiced open defecation. This problem posed a massive public health hazard and economic drag for the country as well as a threat to global health. Written from an insider's perspective, the cases centre on the decisions made by a new Secretary of the India's Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, who was hired to manage SBM, and the team he assembled. Case A sets the stage for addressing open defecation in rural India and discusses the human resources and strategic challenges to implementing SBM from the vantage point of the new Secretary. It ends with strategic dilemmas related to what the new SBM team should do once they had sized up the challenges to eliminating open defecation by 2019. The case provides an opportunity to deliberate the managerial and strategic decisions of a globally relevant public behaviour change and rural infrastructure development program as well as different forms of public sector implementation in the Indian context.