Case studies

After completion of the case study, the students will be able to make strategic decisions for social entrepreneurship and carry out a sustainability and social impact analysis, assess the benefits of a circular economy-based retail model and investigate ways to preserve these benefits and recognize the ethical and sustainable issues facing the fast fashion sector and how social enterprises are addressing them.

The culture of fast fashion had proven to be dangerous for the environment as it had promoted a culture of consumerism and materialism. It had also increased the landfills in different countries. The need of the hour was to upcycle used and unwanted clothes into new innovative items. This idea had been practically implemented by Mrs Sujata Chatterjee of the Twirl Store, the protagonist of this case study. Chatterjee was a social entrepreneur who recognized the environmental and social problems caused by rapid fashion and abandoned apparel in landfills. She launched the Twirl Store, a social enterprise with the mission of advancing circular economy and sustainability practices in the textile sector. Rural women were economically and culturally empowered by the enterprise’s upcycling of used clothing using their abilities, and a sustainable source of income was created. Finding abandoned clothing, sorting and processing it effectively and locating clients who share her commitment to sustainability were difficult tasks for Chatterjee. Despite the difficulties, the Twirl Store served as an example of how circular economy concepts, cultural sustainability and women’s empowerment might be combined, highlighting the importance of social entrepreneurship in addressing global concerns and fostering positive social effects and economic impact.

This case study is applicable for undergraduate as well as post graduate students of management studies.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

After completion of the case study, students will be able to analyse the path of the entrepreneurship from idea generation to market development to scaling up business, examine the impact of start-ups like Ergos on India’s agriculture value chain, discuss the challenges faced by tech entrepreneurs in growing a business, identify problems solved by Grain Bank Model and evaluate digitisation of farming’s custodial services such as warehousing, market linkages and loans.

The case study discusses how founders of Ergos, India-based leading digital AgriTech start-up, Kishor Kumar Jha and Praveen Kumar, started one of the unique models in the AgriTech landscape in India. After noticing the grim condition of small and marginal farmers in Bihar, India. Kishor and Praveen decided to put their banking and corporate experience to use in the farming sector. Ergos aimed to empower farmers by providing them with a choice on when, how much quantity, and at what price they should sell their farm produce, thus maximising their income. As a result, Ergos launched the grain bank model, which provided farmers with doorstep access of end-to-end post-harvest supply chain solutions by leveraging a robust technology platform to ensure seamless service delivery. Ergos faced many challenges in its journey related to financing, marketing and distribution. Amidst these developments, it remained to be seen how Kishor and Praveen would be able to realise their goal to serve over two million farmers across India by 2025 and create a sustainable income for them through its GrainBank Platform.

This case study was written for use in teaching graduate and postgraduate management courses in entrepreneurship and business strategy.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship

After completion of the case study, students will be able to identify the traits required in child leadership and the ability to apply “The Whole Leadership Framework” child leadership model today, identify and discover opportunities to promote child leadership and analyse its sustainable impact and analyse how innovation clubbed with sustainability will create a competitive advantage with special reference to the innovative ultraviolet-C light sterilisation Suraksha Box.

Aditya Pachpande was a child prodigy of India, who had stunned the world with his trailblazing attitude ever since the tender age of 12. Aditya’s father, Sandeep Pachpande, a Harvard alumnus, wondered – “My son is ahead of his time. Would institutions ever acknowledge my innovative boy as a child leader? Will my child become a teen chief executive officer (CEO)? Will he ever get accepted?” Aditya leads by example as a student, changemaker, edupreneur, innovator and keynote speaker. He thinks, “Age is just a number”, but has had to shout out loud to be heard. With the nickname “Lecture man” given by his teachers and peers, he went on to contribute in endorsing skill-based experiential and discovery-based teaching-learning that addresses real-world issues and sustainable development goals. A CEO at the age of 11 years, he co-founded NextGenInnov8 Global Solutions Private Limited and NextGenInnov8 Social Foundation. Although achieving these milestones, he had to manoeuvre through several curve balls hurled at him by the system. Not the one to ever compromise on ethics, values and purpose, today he was at the crossroads – whether he should choose social change over-commercialisation of his business, simplicity and minimalism over product perfection, crowdfunding over loans or angel investors, manufacture in China or make in India just to name a few. The unstoppable Aditya, aspiring for acceptance, dreamt that someday, these policymakers and businesses would acknowledge child innovators and not write them off just because they were adolescents. Aditya, standing on a precipice, dreamt along.

This case has been particularly focused on postgraduate-early stage-level students pursuing business or entrepreneurial education-related programs.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.