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The case describes the internal growth workshop initiative at Vedanta Group. Anil Agarwal in 1976 founded Vedanta as a scrap-metal dealership in Mumbai (then Bombay). Over the years, Anil pursued a very aggressive growth journey with a vision to create a leading global natural resource company. The principal objective of discussing this case is to understand how Vedanta introduced this initiative and how it fits within the strategic human resource management at the group.

Entrepreneurship.

Undergraduate – Entrepreneurship.

The case concerns to an entrepreneur named Aamir Ghouri, a US graduate, who is concerned about managing the growth of his newly established venture named ICON Stores. The case presents the idea of entrepreneurial mindset characteristics and motivation besides which, it also explains the typical venture creation process in Pakistan and the general rubrics used to measure the entrepreneurial success in the economy.

The case is designed to help students to understand entrepreneurial mindset, characteristics and motivation; to understand entrepreneurial venture creation process; to learn the common practices regarding the measurement of entrepreneurial success of new venture; and to outline as to how growth of a new venture could be managed profitably.

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

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

After completion of the case study, the students will be able to appreciate and understand why brands are an essential asset to the company and how they can enhance business value, understand the factors needed to grow brands in the growth stages and evaluate the choices that start-up companies have to grow their brand in competitive and growing markets.

Mamaearth was born as a direct-to-consumer brand in 2016 by a couple who could not find chemical-free, safe products for their child. The company that introduced as a baby-care brand soon consolidated itself to play in the space of personal care category (targeting millennials), and by 2020, it was earning majority of its revenue from skincare. It started by leveraging the power of social media space and online commerce and slowly moved to be a national brand with offline footprint and mass-media communication. In its growth journey, it acquired many brands and launched a few to cater to the specialized needs of its target audience. As the company grew, attracted impressive investors and started clocking profits, it aspired for an initial public offering (IPO). Varun and Ghazal Alagh, the founders of Mamaearth, knew that to refloat an IPO and to grow the company further, they needed to redefine their portfolio and marketing strategy. They had a choice to either invest in building a broader portfolio – organically or inorganically – or expand across geographies. Both were an option, albeit expensive, which could cost Mamaearth its profitability.

This case is intended for discussion in undergraduate and graduate management courses.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

The case talks about Hind Tea Pvt. Ltd (HTPL)-a small and medium enterprise (SME) in India that is 100% owned by Wadhwa family. HTPL procures processed tea from auctions and sells it to distributors under its own brand names. The case describes the journey of two brothers and how the next generation of the family takes over and aspires to make the company a national level player. These aspirations pose new demands on the owners and the business; the case talks about decision making in the family under such a scenario. The case poses interesting questions related to governance, professionalization, succession, and decision making in the family.

Roseda is a family-operated business that had its beginnings in a farm that Ed and his wife purchased before his retirement in 1994. The company’s current business strategy emphasizes producing high-quality natural Black Angus beef without using hormones, chemical additives or antibiotics in cattle feeding and by dry aging the carcasses for enhanced flavor. This case focuses on the alternative growth strategies that Ed Burchell confronts for Roseda in early 2015.

The founder of Roseda Beef and the lead author became acquainted many years ago. In 2014, the two owners of Roseda agreed to have a case written about the firm. The case is based on formal interviews, on site observations at Roseda Farms, and an extensive review of the documentation that exists on this privately held company. In addition, the company made some internal documents available including the income statements and balance sheets for this private company.

This course has been taught four times at the MBA level so far: twice in a strategic management course, and twice in a financial strategy course.

Roseda Beef was developed to provide students in a capstone strategy or finance course the opportunity to undertake a situational analysis including the firm’s summary financials and the rudimentary financial analysis of the expansion opportunities that are included in the case. The case is based on capital budgeting principles in finance and fundamentals of strategy development.

Public Sector Management and Strategy

This case will be useful for courses in information technology (IT) innovation, public–private partnership (PPP) and strategic management. However, the use of the case will differ on the basis of the target audience who could be students of master's course or executive development course. Detailed discussion can be done on co-innovation strategy followed in a public–private partnership and to understand how a PPP can be successful in enterprise solutions. Further, the understanding on how e-procurement and e-tendering solutions work can be gained through this case. This case should be positioned when the discussion for the planning strategy of IT innovation takes place.

SAP was a market leader in enterprise application software and empowered people across the globe to work more efficiently. The e-procurement solution for OILGIAN was managed by SAP LABS India. OILGIAN entrusted SAP with the task to design and implement the e-tendering solution. SAP appointed Ramakrishna Potluri, Lead Consultant, SAP, to manage the design and implementation of the e-tendering module as a part of e-procurement solution for the public sector. The reporting and the security concerns were stated by OILGIAN, and Potluri reassured that his competent team would comply with the needs. The main predicaments that he was going through were that how best he could take the proposition forward. Should he create the innovative solutions in-house or co-create with the customers? Which business models should he follow for this public–private co-innovation to be a predecessor of successful projects?

The case illustrates the following objectives: to discuss the co-innovation strategy followed in a public–private partnership; to understand how a public–private partnership can be successful in enterprise solutions; and to understand how e-procurement and e-tendering solutions work.

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

This case study discussion will enable students to: • Understand and evaluate the steel industry’s nature, opportunities, threats and challenges in an emerging market such as Bangladesh.• Review the techniques used to analyse competition and attractiveness of an industry using Porter’s five forces model. • Identify the corporate-level strategic decisions that can impact the survival and growth of a single business/product company in a highly competitive market. • Evaluate amongst different types of corporate-level growth strategies and their appropriate applications. • Synthesise various internal, industry and market-related information into the selection and justification of any particular corporate-level growth strategy.

BSRM group established Bangladesh’s first-ever steel mill in 1952. For around 70 years, BSRM had been leading the steel industry of Bangladesh with a single product – long steel. Over the recent decade (2010–2020), Bangladesh had been one of the world’'s fastest-growing economies. As the economic development was closely tied with the consumption of steel products, per capita steel consumption in Bangladesh became more than double. Moving from 24 kg in 2010, per capita steel consumption became 55 kg in 2021. Industry experts predicted the per capita steel consumption to be 75 kg by 2024, indicating an enormous scope for the steel industry to grow. Moreover, the industry’s growth momentum was predicted to continue until the nation became a developed one in 2041. This growth momentum kept attracting new competitors to this business. Nevertheless, BSRM maintained the market leadership by dint of its first mover’s advantage, superior quality, branding, innovation and large-scale operations and ultimately accumulated substantial free cash flow over the years. Now, Aameir Alihussain, the Managing Director and CEO of BSRM, was concerned about managing the growth of his business. Would BSRM continue to concentrate on producing steel and building forte by the backward and forward integration of the value chain? Or should the firm opt for some related diversification? Alternatively, was it the right time for BSRM to consider opportunities for unrelated diversification? While opportunities were many, the amount for investment was limited. Thus, Alihussain was in a dilemma pursuing the right corporate-level growth strategy for the overall sustainability of his business in the long run.

This case can be taught in the corporate-level strategy chapter of a core course on strategic management at the undergraduate programs. This case would facilitate students to comprehend the context of corporate-level strategies in managing the growth of a business in an emerging market.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

strategic alliances/collaborative strategies;

defending against global competitors;

related diversification;

entrepreneurship-organizational life cycle; and

evaluating strategies for firm growth.

MBA/PGP level programmes in management and/or entrepreneurship.

Aztec Fluids & Machinery, set up just over four years ago in the city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat, India, caters to the printer hardware, spares and consumables needs of the digital ink jet printing market. The company has identified vendors principally from the UK and China for its printers and consumable sourcing and presently markets these using a hybrid channel structure of direct selling and through 12 distributors in ten cities of India. A recent development of note is the successful transformation of a flexible roll printer into a flat-bed type one by the co-founder. The experiment assumes significance since the cost of a conventional flat-bed screen printer is almost five times that of the improvised printer. The huge, fragmented, price-sensitive, yet quality-conscious market in India offers immense potential for this innovation. At the same time, Aztec's recent interactions with a couple of its UK-based vendors present other alternatives for growth.

To explore organizational life cycle: the introduction and early growth phases.

To understand alliance dynamics for early-stage entrepreneurs –rationale, management and the manifestation of trust between different types of partners: suppliers and customers.

To understand how small firms prepare for and evaluate the challenges of growth.

Teaching note.

This case highlights the challenges faced by a young and inexperienced Area Sales Manager (ASM), early in her career. This is an often-encountered situation by fresh graduates. Through the analysis of the case, the students will be able to: ■ understand challenges a young manager faces in taking over a new, unfamiliar and underperforming territory; ■ analyze and learn to manage data and identify performance gaps in the territory, by selecting the right metrics; ■ learn the factors for evaluating the performance of current intermediaries (distributors); and ■ appreciate the importance of managing all stakeholders – internal team and building a strong relationship with the intermediaries – both distributors and retailers.

Kavita Kaur, the new Area Sales Manager at Broadway India Pvt. Ltd. (BIPL), had just taken over the Chhattisgarh sales territory in January 2020. Fresh out of a B-school, it was her first job, and her allotted territory was severely lagging growth at only 1%, compared to an all-India country growth at 13% in 2019, over the previous year. The territory was operated by established intermediaries (distributors) with long associations with BIPL. Based on her data analyses of distributors’ performance, Kaur started her retail visit with the highest selling distributor’s area (Sharda Agencies) to confirm her understanding of what the data had shown her. Following her retail visit and a meeting with Sharda Agencies, the situation turned for the worse. An email bordering to a threat from him took her aback. Kaur now had to make a choice to ensure growth in her new territory. Her options were between placating the current distributor or appointing a new one – should she retain or replace? Both had their own risks.

This case is intended for use at the postgraduate level in courses such as sales management, channel management and strategic marketing courses, as well as in executive management programs. The case is relevant from the context of channel management in India, where channel intermediaries can be very demanding. The case will give students a practical hands-on decision-making situation, where there are complexities of quantitative and qualitative nature. It will also help young graduates prepare for real life situations where the assigned territory is struggling in performance and a lot is expected from the new recruits.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

The case deals with the issues in managing the growth of a family business engaged in retail and discount stores in Chennai. It highlights one of the strengths of family businesses, namely leveraging family resources into the business. The case also deals with issues of succession planning in family businesses.