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AgriBusiness entrepreneurship

Post-graduate and executive education classes in agribusiness: MBA, Executive Education programmes for senior managers; entrepreneurial studies and workshops for SMEs.

This case study is centred on Ibrahim, a businessman in Tanzania, who decided to start a business to process and sell cassava starch flour. Following a market survey, he realized that the demand for cassava starch surpassed the supply and planned to bridge this gap. To realize his business idea, he applied for and received a loan from an investment bank (Tanzania Investment bank), with which he bought processing machines and some acres of land for the cultivation of the crop. Unfortunately, he encountered a major setback because the sub-standard processing machine he bought stopped working after one week. He could neither repair his equipment nor buy new ones because the bank refused to extend his loan facility. Ibrahim was also having problems meeting a huge international and local demand for his cassava because of inadequate supply of cassava by local farmers.

This paper aims to understand the entire cassava value chain, which is made up of three major players: growers, processors and end-users; to understand the business case for opting to focus on one of the three areas, what arguments could be given for being a grower, a processor or an end-user; to understand that there are different types of end-user products: cassava starch flour, high-quality cassava flour, both of which can come from an intermediate product called “grates”; to understand the reason for the paradox, that there is (potentially) a high demand for cassava flour locally, and yet these end-users are not yet willing to patronize the local market because supply is low, and supply is low, not because farmers cannot produce more, but simply because they are not processing more – why is this?; to understand that the “processing” stage seem to be the rate-limiting-stage in the cassava starch production value chain – how can this process be improved?; to understand the case for aggregating local farmers into cooperatives to produce enough cassava roots to feed the need of industrial processors, and aggregators can also collect and pre-process into “grates” before selling to industrial processing companies; and to understand the importance of locating processing plants close to the farms.

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CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

The case is meant for teaching business management students at the Postgraduate and Executive levels. It can be incorporated in the marketing management, entrepreneurship and international business course curriculum.

Since its inception in 2015, VAHDAM India had carved a niche for itself in the Global Tea Industry in a span of just seven years. The 29-year-old Founder-CEO, Bala Sarda was the first to create India’s largest born-global direct-to-consumer (D2C) premium wellness brand by bridging the gap between demand and supply of the country’s finest teas and superfoods globally. The venture also became a poster child for sustainability by strengthening its green credentials over the course of time.Having attained profitability in FY21, VAHDAM now aims to become a ₹500 Cr. brand by FY24. To push the goal across the line, channelisation of marketing will take centre stage. The case highlights the management’s dilemma of using green marketing as the pivot for increasing its market share in the emerging economies and boosting revenue. The underscored opportunities and challenges have to be addressed so as to formulate a green marketing mix suitable for the emerging market scenario.

Participants will develop an understanding about the evolving consumption landscape inclining towards eco-friendly wellness products and the relationship between green marketing mix, brand equity and its channelisation towards revenue generation. They will also get an overview of marketing challenges faced by a premium D2C wellness brand while entering an emerging market. The readers shall be able to analyse and suggest ideas for the formulation of an effective green marketing mix to meet the consumer expectations and achieve desired brand positioning.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing

The learning outcome of this study is to bring to the table of a wider intellectual audience, a unique model of community-based entrepreneurship, which is working wonders with its unique selling points (USPs) in promoting sustainability and conserving the ethos of villages and, at the same time, generating livelihoods through traditional farming techniques adopted by the rural population residing in the Himalayan region of India.The proposed case study can be used as a replicable model in other parts of rural India and other emerging economies to start and scale up a similar “integrated rural development model” through effective policy advocacy and public–private partnerships and to develop sustainable farmlands and livelihoods for rural India. It has a definite potential to be used as a pedagogical tool in postgraduate programmes offering courses in microfinance, financial inclusion, social and community entrepreneurship, sustainability, entrepreneurship, community development finance and rural immersions and public policy.

This case study is set in the backdrop of 2023 having been declared by the UN as the International Year of Millets and India being the homeland for millet cultivation. The objective of the case study is to bring to the table of a wider intellectual audience, a unique model of community-based entrepreneurship operating in the Himalayan region of rural India. The community-based entrepreneurship model works on the USP of promoting sustainability and conserving the ethos of villages and generating livelihoods through traditional farming techniques. This case study traces the journey of Roopesh Rai (protagonist and the founder of Bakrichhap), the community-based entrepreneur and his challenges in setting up the enterprise. The narrative is built in the light of a series of interviews with Rai, the main protagonist and the founder of Bakrichhap, as well as the people of Goat village by Komal, a post-doctoral fellow in the area of community-based enterprises (CBEs). Through this narrative, the case writers’ endeavour was to understand how CBEs such as Bakrichhap were providing a means of integrated rural development in the hilly region of Uttarakhand, India. Also, how such enterprises were thereby curbing distress migration, unemployment and a large-scale erosion of the cultural heritage and traditional and indigenous farming techniques of the land. In the first seven years of the operations of this uniquely curated CBE, Rai endeavoured to iron out many bottlenecks. This case study also highlights the gamut of challenges faced by community-based entrepreneurs like Rai in designing strategy for growth and expansion. What strategy should Bakrichhap follow for expansion to the other regions of the country? Should all the three existing verticals of the enterprise be scaled up parallelly or should each individual vertical be expanded one after the other in a phased manner? Stemming out from the main dilemma of strategic expansion were the related issues of funding (finance) and the formation of an effective team (HR).

This case study can be used in undergraduate, graduate and executive programmes offering courses in microfinance, financial inclusion, social and community entrepreneurship, sustainability, entrepreneurship, community development finance and rural immersions and public policy.

This comprehensive case study is written by using the triangulation of data collected through a series of personal interviews, website information, news articles, personal observation and field visits. The research design used is single case (holistic; Yin, 2003, 3rd edition). The timeline of this case study is 2021 to 2022 and place is Nag Tibba, Uttarakhand, a Himalayan state in North India.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

The learning outcomes of this case study are to understand the business model canvas and value propositions and apply advanced business innovation tools in electric vehicle business models; evaluate the current cargo vehicle scenarios at national and global levels and draw out the possibilities and costs for a new player; extrapolate the future scenario of the cargo economy, its electrification and positioning in a business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-customer (B2C) segment, especially for a developing economy; and improve the student’s ability to get organisational buy-in and execute new business models.

LoadExx is a fully electrified electric cargo service focusing on logistics in Kolkata, a metropolitan city in the eastern part of the country. The service of LoadExx commenced in January 2021 in the B2B segment after overcoming its then issues of driver hesitancy and customer anxiety and financial issues to adopt electrified cargo systems. The conundrum faced by LoadExx in its commencement thus had been solved under the able guidance of its owner Amit Arora. The case study was positioned four months after the commencement of LoadExx. To gain market power and traction, Arora and his team came up with the idea of market expansion. However, the current conundrum was whether LoadExx would enter the B2C segment in its current location or expand with the same business model to other parts of the country. The expansion was to be implemented in the immediate future to retain its rarity and reduce the imitability of the business model of LoadExx. This case study details the logistics and market operations of the cargo sector, especially electric cargo, in a developing economy, especially India. A teaching note supplementing the “Cracking the conundrum of e-cargo logistics: curious case of LoadExx” case study has been provided.

This case study is designed for undergraduate and postgraduate students and senior management professionals in executive education programmes undertaking courses in logistics management and supply chain operations and related cargo logistics courses. This case study denotes integrating key processes from end-users and gaining the trust of drivers, thereby showing the perspective of the plight and conundrums of a cargo aggregator working in the B2C segment. This case study could be used to discuss concepts related to not-for-profit firms, aggregators, policymakers and think tanks.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 9: Operations and logistics.

In early 2017, after launching its successful “Greenhouse-in-a-Box” pilot project in India with fifteen smallholder farmers, Kheyti, a non-profit agricultural technology (AgTech) social enterprise, was struggling with several decisions in developing and growing its business. Kheyti was launched in 2015 to help smallholder farmers battle poverty and income variability by providing affordable technologies bundled with services. Over eighteen months, the team had developed a low-cost and modular greenhouse product to which it added financing, inputs, training, and market linkages to create a comprehensive “full-stack” solution for small farmers. The pilot project was a success in many ways, but Saumya, Kheyti's co-founder and head of product, was concerned that it revealed shortcomings that could severely affect the viability and scalability of Kheyti's solution.

Saumya had some important decisions to make. Should Kheyti redesign the product from scratch, or find other ways to reduce the cost for early adopters? Should it rely on upfront revenues from sales of the greenhouse, or consider developing an innovative financing or contract farming model? Kheyti's dwindling cash reserves meant that these decisions were urgent and critical. The path chosen now would determine whether the startup would move beyond the pilot stage and achieve its vision of serving 1 million farmers by 2025.

Entrepreneurship.

Undergraduate/postgraduate students in Management.

This case concerns the startup, Weekendworks Private Limited and their flagship service – Junkart – which aims to solve waste management issues in Delhi, India. Using recent technological improvements, the co-founders have developed a business model that connects customers/scrap owners and the vendors/Kabadiwalas. The case is focused on their entrepreneurial journey and the critical social issues that their dream aims to solve. It also focuses on displaying the strategic issues faced by an entrepreneur working in the informal sector of waste management and the entrepreneurial dilemma of a social entrepreneur.

The case can be used in both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. The students should develop an entrepreneurial mindset by learning key entrepreneurial traits; develop an ability to recognize an entrepreneurial opportunity especially in the context of social entrepreneurship; recognize entrepreneurial processes and outcomes in real-world situations; and understand entrepreneurship within a set of practical frameworks and concepts.

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.

Help students understand Porter’s five forces framework. Explore and analyze possible growth strategies using the Ansoff matrix.

This case study integrates lessons in growth strategies, Porter’s five forces and the Ansoff matrix. Vijay Kothari, Founder of Wealth out of Waste (WOW) is in a fix. In spite of functioning in an environment of abundant demand and potential, he is unable to perform in his optimum capacity because of operational and manpower-related issues. WOW, which turned nine in 2019, is a sort of monopoly in the organized business of scheduled collection of recyclable trash. WOW is operating in a 2% market with 98% being captured by traditional “pastiwalas.” From the current waiting period of up to seven days, Kothari wants to service any area in the city of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India within 2 h. To achieve this objective, how should Kothari overcome the growth challenge in the business.

Undergraduate and postgraduate.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

Information Systems – IT Strategy Design and Implementation.

The case can be discussed in Marketing Management courses and IT Strategy classes in MBA, executives from NGOs who are participating in Management Development Programs, etc. It can also be used in entrepreneurship classes. The case serves as an illustration to entrepreneurship projects, and so this case can be discussed in training program for budding entrepreneurs intending to implement cloud in its IT infrastructure.

E-commerce is big nowadays in India. In e-commerce, particularly e-tail in India is witnessing a boom with players reporting achieving revenue targets earlier than anticipated. Though e-tail sites are now ubiquitous and dime a dozen with multiple offerings or specialized offerings, the e-grocery model is yet to take off on a large scale across India. E-grocery model has its unique challenges on both supply as well as distribution side unlike other e-tail business. As it deals with perishable items, it faces challenges in supply chain, procurement, inventory management, cold storage management, quality and logistics. To solve such problems, high degree of localization is needed for players in this business. It requires them to open up multiple warehouses at strategic locations in a city if they decide to have control over the goods they sell. Start-ups in this space face the problems in monitoring inventory levels across warehouses where they use disparate Point of Sales (POS) systems. There is a lack of synchronization among the POS applications across the warehouses for which they are able to take the benefit of economies of scale during procurement and distribution. Also, they face stock out and excess inventory across stock keeping units (SKUs). To solve this problem, a strategy is needed so that they can maintain data for all its warehouses through a single database and also by which they can scale up easily and at a lower investment without disturbing continuity in business.

Following are the learning outcomes: to learn about the business model and market ecosystem of an e-tailing business dealing in grocery items in a tier-II city in its introduction phase of organizational life cycle, to learn about various processes involved in online ordering of an item from an e-commerce website, to understand the various challenges faced by an organization dealing in e-tailing business in its introduction phase and to find out whether IT Strategy can be of help to overcome these challenges, to have an understanding of the Balance Score Card and Departmental Score Card, to understand how cloud can be of help to overcome the challenges and what are the possible cloud architectures to address such problems, to get an idea about how return on investment can be measured for finding feasibility of investment in cloud and to have the understanding of risk associated with implementing cloud and the cost of mitigating those risks.

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:11 Strategy.

This case is designed to facilitate students to comprehend the challenges an e-commerce firm faces when it attempts to monetize data network effects. The challenges faced by Zomato are ideal for in-class debate and discussion. The following learning objectives can be fulfilled through this case: understanding the promises and issues raised by data network effects; comprehending the problems an e-commerce firm faces in re-configuration; illustrating the responsibility of an established e-commerce firm towards its stakeholders; and discussing how a firm should navigate its relationship with its stakeholders.

Zomato.com, the largest Indian food aggregator and delivery platform, was contemplating the launch of Zomato Instant, a 10-min food delivery. Currently, the company’s delivery model pivoted around delivering food within 30 min. Recently, Zomato acquired Blinkit, an online grocery shopping app that was positioned to deliver groceries in 10 min. Deepinder Goyal of Zomato felt that customers would soon be more discriminant in demanding quicker services, as they might not be comfortable with 30-min deliveries. Hence, Zomato’s business model must also be re-configured to provide 10-min deliveries. Armed with access to customer data, Goyal predicted items that could be prepared and delivered within 10 min from its dark stores and automated kitchens. Although the model seemed promising and the company was upbeat about it, Zomato Instant faced challenges on several fronts. From the human angle, the decision was criticized on social media, mainly around the violation of road regulations, road safety issues and pressure on the delivery personnel to perform. Many delivery personnel had fled this gig work to join their pre-COVID jobs. Even the Competition Commission of India had established an inquiry into Zomato’s anti-competitive practices using customer data.

This case is best taught as part of a curriculum in management programmes at the post-graduate level, in courses such as e-commerce, e-retailing, business models for electronic commerce and online entrepreneurship/new age entrepreneurship. In terms of the positioning in the course, this case could be used to demonstrate the challenges of re-configuration of an online platform.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

This case replaces UVA-M-0837. It can be used in a variety of marketing and strategy classes to understand how (1) at a macro level, a shift in consumer and environmental factors can impact firm strategy and (2) at a micro level, an e-mail-based marketing campaign designed to address these changes can impact firm-level performance.

The case puts the students in the position of CEO Robert Huth as he is preparing for a board meeting. He had taken David's Bridal from a loss in 1996 to sales of over $1 billion by 2011, but he was concerned about future growth. People were waiting longer and longer to get married and, once they decided to, were spending much less than in the past, so the industry had seen year-over-year declines since 2007. How would David's Bridal establish its brand in the minds of a new generation of brides who shopped, purchased, and decided differently than had brides in past generations?