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Neons Fashion LLP was an entrepreneurial venture of Arthi Ramalingam after completion of her MBA. Arthi had an interest in jewellery since childhood and she decided to focus on design, manufacturing and retailing of fashion and costume jewellery items under the brand name of Eternz through different sales channels like exhibitions, retail stores, own website and as an independent seller on e-commerce marketplaces. She initially started selling on Amazon marketplace through a third party, Cloudtail India Pvt. Ltd., and later sold through other e-commerce marketplace operators like Flipkart, Jabong and FirstCry. As her business grew, Arthi planned to add the kids' shoes category and also decided to participate in Bangalore Fashion Week to build the Eternz brand. However, in November 2016, Cloudtail terminated her contract which played havoc with the sales and profitability of her start-up. Neons Fashion LLP (A) provides details of how independent sellers are at the mercy of marketplace operators and ends with the need to review the choices of sales channels for different categories like fashion garments and fashion accessories, and for the upcoming launch of kids' shoes. Neons Fashion LLP (B) describes the events after the Bangalore Fashion Week that ultimately led to closure of business.

The learning outcomes of this case study are as follows: It presents an opportunity for the instructors to introduce the concept of decision-making on matters involving risk (like scaling the business) using in-depth market research techniques. The case’s central idea is to make the students understand the growth of the online service delivery model, with a specific example of home-cooked food that also improves social welfare. It is expected to provide the participants with an opportunity to understand the decision-making by the leaders in newly established companies. It enables future managers to analyze a venture’s pros and cons before deciding to expand.

Chef Junction is an online food delivery platform that allows customers to order hygienic home-cooked food prepared by handpicked home chefs in Bhubaneswar. This city in eastern India is one of the fastest-growing metros, is regarded as a study hub, and provides ample employment opportunities making it one of the sought-after destinations for the migrant youth population. The idea behind Chef Junction is to cater to the healthy food needs of the young by utilizing the culinary productivity of the home cooks, empowering the latter by opening up an extra source of income. These chefs prepare delicious healthy food, usually not listed for sale with online food delivery apps. Chef Junction earned revenues by adding an order-dependent commission on the price quoted by chefs and accepting a flat delivery charge from the customers. This offer was very lucrative for home chefs who could join the platform with zero investment and flexible working hours. The customer’s pockets were also handled when several offers and discounts were rolled out through an attractive pricing strategy. Chef Junction expected to improve its patrons’ health quotient by ensuring the nutrition of the home-cooked food, thus contributing to social welfare. With food being delivered from home to home amalgamated with social welfare and empowerment of home chefs, especially women, this case study is an apt example of a sustainable work-from-home model that has proved effective in crisis times. The pertinent question is: “How feasibly can CJ’s business model grow towards an expansion as the demand increases?”

This case study has been prepared keeping in mind the teaching pedagogy for graduate and postgraduate management programs in strategic management, operations research, entrepreneurship and marketing management. It is also expected to be useful for training courses such as management development programs, faculty development programs and executive programs, in discussing service operations in general and online delivery logistics, in particular for working executives and industry practitioners.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

The first company under the Amara Raja Group was established in 1984, i.e. Amara Raja Electronics Limited (AREL) followed by Amara Raja Batteries Limited (ARBL). Its founder leveraged the presence of his family in Renigunta, a rural village in South India, and chose to start the industry there to create employment opportunities. Preference is given to local population in all ARG enterprises. Despite its strong people orientation, the HR department/function at ARG got strengthened only after Jaikrishna strived to make it central to business. The department's evolution has been demarcated in three phases. The first and second phase saw few initiatives, and during the third phase the HR department was structured according to the Dave Ulrich Strategic HR Model. While this structure had been successful until now, certain sections in ARG still doubted its sustainability.

Marketing management – services marketing specialization.

MBA/PGDM senior students studying services marketing as a specialization course.

US Technology Private Ltd (UST) is a major software services company in India. It was started in 1999 with a few employees at an offshore development centre in Trivandrum. Now in 2010, renamed UST Global, the company has over 7,000 employees worldwide. Phenomenal success of such a software company, in the left-oriented party dominated state of Kerala, has invited the attention of many people in the industry. The company earned valuable foreign exchange through software exports for the country and the state over the last ten years. The company has created innovative service differentiators, to impress on its clients, on the advantage of doing business with the company. The cementing customer satisfaction and derived customer delight that the company has created in their clients, has secured stable customer relationship management and customer loyalty. This reinforces the trust they have shown in the services management philosophy adopted by the company. The company's unique hybrid delivery model has worked well with its clients. Its unique selling proposition of “few clients and more focus” has resulted in delight of its customers, as they see it as a value addition for their money's worth. The leadership team attributes the success of the company to its fundamental core values and twin strategy of customer centricity and employee focus.

These are: customer perception of service; purpose of customer relationship management; service differentiators; and employees' role in delivering successful software service solutions to the customer, etc.

Teaching notes.

The purpose of this case study is to illustrate how Dianne Savastano, founder and CEO of Healthassist, Inc., a US-based health-care advocacy firm, successfully led her clients and team through the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. To gather the data for this case study, the authors interviewed the protagonists, the members of her team and two clients. The authors read Healthassist Newsletters and the firm’s documents; and in fact, they included one Newsletter and several documents in the Exhibits of the case study. The authors conducted a literature review for articles in newspapers and journals about the newly developing field of “health-care advocacy,” a field which Savastano helped to create.

The authors illustrate how Savastano, using the five practices of exemplary leadership by Kouzes and Posner, in The Leadership Challenge, led her team through the pandemic of 2020. This is a story of a woman leader, using traits such as warmth, empathy, analysis and decisiveness, keeps her small business afloat when so many other firms collapsed in 2020.

The authors conducted seven interviews and literature searches on the topics of health-care advocacy; women leaders; leading through a crisis; and COVID-19.

The case study illustrates how a woman founder and CEO can lead her firm through a crisis.

This is an example of how a woman leader managed through the 2020 pandemic.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship

After a thorough analysis of the case, students will be able to do the following: understand the building blocks of incentive structure in an organizational setting. Review the existing incentive structure at WINFORT. Develop effective incentive approaches to motivate employees at workplace. Illustrate the importance of performance management review to motivate employees.

The case explores the motivational state of a talent acquisition executive or talent scout working for a staffing firm, WINFORT Services in New Delhi, India. The two main characters in the cast are Helena Stacy, the Lead Talent Scout at WINFORT and Sofia Williams, the Talent scout. There was a meeting conducted between Helena and Sofia regarding the latter’s performance review held annually. However, to Sofia’s surprise, she could to get any salary hike this time as she failed to achieve her given targets. This led to a serious altercation between the two and resulted in Sofia started thinking of looking for alternate job opportunities.

The case is suitable for any postgraduate course, in particular MBA or MBA executive development program on human resource management, talent management, compensation and benefits, and as a module on motivation in organizational behavior.

CSS 6: Human Resource Management.

In addition, there are more resources available to augment the understanding of the business operations of staffing firms in India. Interested instructors and students are advised to go through these resources to better understand the routine operations of a staffing organization. https://talentcorner.in/how-recruitment-industry-generates-wealth/ https://wowidea.in/how-recruitment-agencies-in-india-works/ https://www.michaelpage.be/about-us/our-recruitment-process?fbclid=iwar0ftzztbzm5afvdwv_oyvp1f1p8zgpuflrbt8z6yg9zakm5c0kaoaom6ha

Marketing, e-marketing, strategy.

Suited for final-year undergraduate and graduate courses in marketing strategy, strategic sales management, e-marketing and internet businesses.

This case follows the evolution of Mech Technologies and Website Portals Division within the company. CEO of the company who was also heading the division was grappling an unprofitable venture. A dilemma of competitors offering free services while his portals were devoid of matching revenue stream added to his woes as he was strategizing a turnaround. Readers get an insightful review of the industry, key competitors as well as emerging challenges.

Developing marketing strategy for a small organization in an emerging market. Learning about evolution and challenges faced by internet businesses in developing economies.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or e-mail support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

This case describes the knowledge management (KM) initiatives at the level of a unit of one of the largest chemical companies in India. The unit, Tata Chemicals Ltd, Mithapur, has a unique knowledge base accumulated over generations of experiments, trials, and errors. It is in the midst of implementing a rejuvenation plan that has created opportunities for external knowledge assimilation and new knowledge generation. With details on the initiatives for knowledge collection, sharing, measurement of performance and the systems for rewards and recognition, the case provides an opportunity to the participants of a programme on Knowledge Management to analyze the initiatives and make recommendations for the future to the head of Knowledge Management function at the company. The participants would be able to map the realm of knowledge management in an organization and discern - how KM initiatives contributed to the transformation of the organisation from manufacturing centred mind-set to customer focused one.

The learning outcomes are as follows: to strike a balance between business growth and keeping the core Gandhian philosophies intact; to evaluate the relevance of Gandhian philosophy in the age of the digital era, especially for the grassroots enterprises; and to identify the leadership characteristics demonstrated by Pabiben from the lens of servant-leadership theory.

The case describes the journey of a grassroots-based rural women entrepreneur, Pabibben, who had created an artisan's enterprise and rural business model based on Gandhian philosophies. The case focuses on whether Gandhian philosophies are still relevant in today's time for business growth. The case appeals to the academic fraternity, budding entrepreneurs, social sector start-ups and practitioners who believe in the inclusive and holistic growth of an individual, community, society and the nation.

The case is about the dilemma of how to grow a business ethically and balance economic and social gain. Pabiben used Gandhian philosophies as a set of values to make decisions and set policies for her business. Pabiben wanted to grow her business and expand her e-commerce portal “Pabiben.com” for other artisans to display, promote and sell their products to the global communities. She had to decide on the following:

1. Should she sell other artisans' products under “Pabiben.com”?

2. Should she allow other artisans to create their own identity on the portal and help the artisans' community grow?

3. Are Gandhian philosophies still relevant in today’s time for business growth?

The case can be used for both undergraduate and postgraduate students to teach entrepreneurship courses, especially social entrepreneurship and rural entrepreneurship. The case can also be used on the subject of corporate social responsibility, business ethics and women leadership. The case explains the concept of values/philosophies-based entrepreneurship and innovations.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

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The learning outcomes are as follows: educate the students about the challenges in the development sector in general and in work of organizations working for women empowerment in particular; understand the overall concept of women empowerment vis-à-vis social entrepreneurship; explain the importance of technology in entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship and development sector especially in marginalized communities in developing countries; and learn operational-level resource management in a resource-constrained setting of a non-profit sector.

Kaarvan Crafts Foundation (referred to as Kaarvan henceforth) worked for women empowerment in Pakistan with a focus on creating economic opportunities for rural women entrepreneurs. The case shares different initiatives by Kaarvan for creating opportunities for economic empowerment of rural women entrepreneurs. The main focus of the case is a program “Digitize to Equalize” in which Kaarvan offered digital literacy training to rural women entrepreneurs. The program involved developing an ecommerce platform where rural women entrepreneurs could sell their handicrafts and other products. A comprehensive training activity was designed as part of the program to facilitate trainees to sell their products on a purpose-built website. The training covered different activities ranging from using smartphones, basic product photography to order handling. Even in the initial phase, the challenges were somewhat unexpected for the team as they grappled with diversity of learning among the trainees. Few trainee women were able to learn the skills quickly and requested their trainers from Kaarvan to train them on widely popular skills of social media marketing. At the same time, other trainees were struggling with basic skills and needed more time to get basics right. Because the program had limited resources, Kaarvan’s management found themselves in a fix. The mission-oriented organization wanted to ensure the best possible opportunities for the trainees but the resources did not permit to create separate cohorts for different training areas.

In terms of complexity, this case study is suited for business students enrolled in senior undergraduate, graduate programs and executive MBA programs.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 7: Management Science.