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The Olympic Gold Quest (OGQ) was founded as a Non-profit to support Indian athletes in their quest to win Olympic Gold medals by bridging the gap between the best athletes in India and in the world. The support from OGQ has been instrumental to India in winning its highest number of medals at any summer Olympics. Buoyed by this success, OGQ has set up a target of achieving eight Olympic medals at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. With OGQ relying on donations to support the athletes, the challenge is to market the Olympic cause by creating, communicating, and delivering the right offering for its donors.

In early 2013, Mr. Deepak Kumar, Chairman and Group CEO of MakeMyTrip1 (MMT), summoned a meeting to discuss about redesigning the MMT Homepage2. It was a three-hour meeting at the Hindustan Conference Room at the company's head office in Gurgaon, India. Theis meeting was attended by key members of the homepage website redesign team comprising the CBO, Analytics head, User Experience (UX) head, Product head and the Tech head (CTO). As a pre-read for the meeting, Ajay Singh, Product Head, shared his findings3 that could help in defining the issues faced by visitors to the homepage of MMT.

Prayas is a unique healthcare initiative, launched in India by Sanofi-Aventis, a French multinational pharmaceutical company, with the objectives of updating the medical knowledge of doctors in semi-urban and rural areas, bridging the gap between diagnosis and treatment, and making available quality medicines at affordable prices. This case discusses the evolution of the Prayas model from its inception to its current state, and the company's business strategies around it. Cognizant of the success of Prayas, many competitors of Sanofi-Aventis are actively developing and implementing similar models. The company's top management team has to respond to the competitive threat.

O.P. Sharma, Convener, Provident Fund (PF) Committee, Kirori Mal College, had to re-invest the amount to be received after the maturity of fixed deposits (FD) in Canara Bank, maturing on July 12, 2018 (INR 5.88 cr.) and on July 14, 2018 (INR 6.70 cr.). He wanted to reinvest the funds in bank FDs for more than a year but less than two years to earn the maximum interest possible, since the current market interest rate trends indicated a severe downfall of interest rates in the near future, but Ram Saran, Section Officer of the College, wanted to reinvest this money for less than one year since there would be a requirement of funds in the short term. However, given Saran's views, O. P. Sharma had to convince the committee members about the feasibility of his proposal for two-year FDs. The case will enable participants to identify the components of a financial investment decision making, investment analysis, evaluation of options and recommendation with the decision of investment plan.

This case should facilitate participants to analyze the influence of internal and external factors on a growing company in the dairy, agro and food industries; analyze the drivers of a company’s competitive advantage; evaluate the relevance of the company in the new product-markets; and propose growth strategies for the expansion of the business beyond the core markets.

Gyan Dairy began its journey in 2007 and operated in the business-to-business segment by supplying skimmed milk powder and white butter to other dairy players. Then, the company launched its packaged milk brand in Lucknow – the capital city of Uttar Pradesh – one of the largest provinces in India. By the end of 2020, Gyan was the leading private dairy brand in Uttar Pradesh. The company’s vision was to become one of the top dairy brands in India by 2035. While deliberating on the growth choice, the company’s senior management debated whether to strengthen the company’s position in the existing markets or expand operations in adjacent locations. Increasing market share would have led to price wars or advertising costs. Diversifying into product categories involved the risk of product–market misfit and new product development and marketing costs. However, pursuing these options would further strengthen the company’s position in the North Indian market. Expanding into new locations would help establish the company’s presence across different parts of India. However, both these options were replete with various challenges. Expanding into new markets needed one of the promoters of the Gyan Diary, to relocate, build new markets and institutional connections and build a completely new localized economy of scale, which would create a financial burden on existing operations until the new operation was self-sustainable. However, in this journey, they would find and build a model to help expand their operations in other countries as well. Ideally, the company could pursue all the options, but this was not possible due to constrained resources.

This case allows students to discuss and evaluate alternate growth options associated with operationalizing the growth strategy choices in perishable branded food categories beyond existing markets and products. In addition, it also helps discuss how to arrive at such decisions after analyzing the focal firm’s market opportunities and existing capabilities. This case is helpful for the “growth strategy” module in the strategic management core course in a general MBA program and in specialized MBA programs in food and agri-business management.

This case is suitable for graduate-level courses on strategic management courses in general management programs and agri-business management programs. In a strategic management course, the case will help cover topics such as analysis of the internal and external environment of the firm and growth and expansion strategies. This case will help teach how to build competitive advantage in dairy and agro-food industries and the strategic analysis needed while pursuing growth decisions. Emerging markets, including India, are the growth markets for leading multinational companies in the food and dairy industries.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.