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This case study intends to add knowledge and understanding of supply chain management particularly with respect to international logistics.

The case study can be used in both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Students pursuing Master of Science in Logistics, Supply Chain Management and those doing bachelor degrees in the same areas can have a better insight and special interest of the case. Professional boards may also use the case to empirically make students understand this area.

The railway sub-sector in East Africa – Tanzania in particular – is an important transport mode but has a declining performance. The market share is estimated at only 4 percent of the freight market. Still knowledge about traffic, particularly for freight, is scant. The main dilemma is whether traffic of the central corridor is more intra- or inter-Tanzania. The case studies techniques appropriate for meaningful traffic forecasting and through a simple regression model it resolves the freight conflicts between Kenya rail and the Central Corridor. It provides students with applied traffic forecasting tools.

The case focuses on techniques of traffic forecasting, development of traffic scenarios and on issues related to intermodal transport especially between road, rail and ocean. At the end of using this Case students should be able to: explain the methods, techniques and models used in traffic forecasting; understand intermodal linkages in international Logistics; use different approaches to make logistics market assessment; and forecast traffic in all modes using different scenarios.

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.

Towards the end of 90s, mounting losses forced Madhya Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (MPSRTC), the sole provider of public transport in Madhya Pradesh, to suspend their urban services. As a consequence, organized public transport services ceased to exist in Indore, the largest metropolitan city of the state of Madhya Pradesh. This void was filled by Intermediate Public Transport (IPT) consisting of minibuses, tempos and auto rickshaws. As of January 2004, 300 private minibuses, 150 tempos, and 10,000 auto rickshaws were plying as IPT, but with poor service levels. Lack of public transport was a catalyst for rapid increase in personalized vehicles, and high level of pollution and accidents. Worried over the rapid growth of personalized vehicles, and high levels of pollution and accidents in Indore, policy makers and administrators had made several attempts of reviving the public transport system in the city. In 2005, the Collector and District Magistrate of Indore decided to make another attempt of reviving the public transport. The two cases, Indore City Bus Transport Service (A) and Indore City Bus Transport Service (B) discuss the complexity involved in the planning, rolling out, and running of public transport services in Indore on a sustainable basis. Case (A) details the prevalent socio-economic condition, travel characteristics, and positions taken by various stakeholders on provisioning of public transport service in Indore as of November 2005. Case (B) discusses the challenges during the growth and operation of the services as of June 2008. Unprecedented rise in crude oil prices along with (i) increase in maintenance cost of buses, price of new buses, and bank interest and (ii) decrease/marginal increase in the fare box revenue (more people were shifting to passes) and advertisement revenue depleted the margin of the operators. The fares had not been increased since the launch of services in February 2006. It was clear that Indore City Transport Service Limited (ICTSL), the SPV created to run the transport system, would survive only if operators were able to survive. The readers have to take the position of the board of ICTSL and consider various options available to them for running the services on a sustainable basis.

Strategy.

Post-Graduate and Executive Programmes in Management.

Mr Srinivas Kesineni has been chairman of Kesineni Tours and Travels for the last 19 years. Kesineni Tours and Travels is one of the fastest growing bus travel and transport organisations. The case describes the journey of Kesineni Tours and Travels since its inception. It also outlines different strategies adopted by the Chairman to reach newer heights, to survive and to grow in the turbulent times of changing technology and rising competition from different means of transportation. This unique organisation is run by family, friends and well-wishers of the owners, yet it is professional in its approach in operations. The board of directors of Kesineni Tours and Travels has approved the financial results of 2010, which shows 55 percent growth and Rs 86.71 crores turnover. This is a remarkable achievement and recognition for a company that has been in the business since 1992. In early 1992, entrepreneur Mr Srinivas Kesineni thought of a bus transportation business when he started with just two buses, and today when the organization is the largest tour and travel company in the region serving approximately 15 lack customers in a year covering 75 destinations with around 425 daily schedules. He and his team have been working tirelessly and the company has a remarkable presence in the tour and travel business in India with occasional innovative moves from optimising bus routing, initiating sleeper coaches, introducing Volvo buses to the fleet, entering the cargo transportation business and more. This business has grown at CAGR of 24.07 percent since 2000-2001. Students reading this case may come to the class with preconceived views that the journey of the organisation since its beginning is an ordinary story, but this case creates an opportunity for students to come to their own conclusion how different strategies and the synthesis is important for achieving desired outcomes form time to time. This case facilitates the deductive learning process by identifying different strategic elements form the case and to understand its synergy to explain McKinsey 7s framework.

These include: understanding different strategies and policies adopted by the organisation and its impact on performance; understanding the importance of alignment of processes and departments in achievement of organisational strategy; and analysing and understanding the concept of the McKinsey 7S Framework, which is a helpful tool to understand the performance of the organisation.

Teaching notes are available. Bradach, Jaffrey, Organisational Alignment: The 7S Model, Harvard Business School Publishing are useful for further reading.

The learning outcome is that it will help to sustain your startups in the ever-changing business environment especially in the context of emerging markets.

The present case is about Dilkhush Kumar from village Bangaon, India who developed a cab booking platform “AryaGo”, an innovative platform completely dedicated for rural road transport connectivity. AryaGo is the service line of Aryan Cabs and Rural Trans-solution Pvt. Ltd., a Startup founded in the year 2016 under Startup Bihar, a seed capital support scheme of State Government. The idea was to provide comfort, convenience, safety and affordability to all the commuters travelling from or within far-off villages. The biggest challenge during implementation in villages includes availability of updated geo-mapped images for app development and vehicle tracking. Company was foremost in providing the kiosk-based booking facility for its customers. It took the decision based on the profiling of customers and their preferred booking methods. When a customer booked a cab using IVR, they did not had access to app-based customer panel and hence they could not avail services such as, location tracking, SoS, real time tracking of vehicle. However, heavy invest in IT has put the company in financial stress and Kumar is wondering whether to expand fast or penetrate in the given target market. Should he re-design his business model so as it can really make a difference in terms of service delivery?

Post Graduate/ MBA.

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 8: Marketing

This case describes the events following an incident of a rape in a taxi associated with Uber, by its driver. Uber was an application based taxi operator. The events raised several issues for government systems and processes, such as need for regulation of new formats of business like application based taxi services, integrated databases, checks against forgery and holistic approach towards women safety. The case also brings out how an e-commerce business raises regulatory concerns.

Organizational behavior, leadership, strategic management.

This case can be used at Master's level management students as well as for executive education programmes. The case can be used to teach courses like organizational behavior, leadership and strategic management.

Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation (MRVC) had been established with a purpose of catering the rail transportation requirement of Mumbai, the economic capital of India. After its establishment in the year 1999, commuters were hopeful but very less development and improvement was reported for six years. Mr P.C. Sehgal took over as Managing Director of MRVC in the year 2005. The primary task of Mr P.C. Sehgal was to implement the rail development plan proposed by Mumbai Urban Transport Project within the deadlines. Implementation of the given plan had various challenges and required high degree of coordination with different stakeholders (like Government of Maharashtra, Central Railway, Western Railway, etc.). It also required taking important decisions to move work fast and dealing with media and public pressure.

The case would instigate students to delve on the aspects of leadership and how the leader brings about change. The students would also get to know the challenges a leader face when he takes charge of an underperforming but critically important organization. Further the students are also exposed to the context of organizational management where the organization is trapped in a web of relations with conflicting stakeholders.

Teaching note.

This case deals with the need of a European company to import organic soybean from India. The company's India Operations Manager wants to know the feasibility of such a venture. The case describes the procurement of organic soybean from a city in central India, understanding standards of organic production, and finally the costs and procedures involved in exporting the organic soybean to Europe.

The learning outcomes of this study are as follows:

Teaching Objective 1: Students will describe specific characteristics of the rural market in India and will draw out the differences vis-a-vis the urban markets.

Teaching Objective 2: Students will describe about the push versus pull strategy and various channels of distribution in rural areas.

Teaching Objective 3: The students will explain the 4As of the rural marketing mix and apply the same in the context of the case.

Teaching Objective 4: The case can be applied with respect to the health-belief model to help students analyse the behaviour change model.

Teaching Objective 5: Students will analyse the challenges associated with supply chain and logistics in rural areas.

This case study looked at a start-up company Rugved Hygienecare Industries Private Limited and their sanitary napkin brand “Abolee” designed and targeted for rural women in India. Onkar Charegaonkar and Mithila Charegaonkar started this venture in December 2017, realizing that sanitary napkins solved a greater purpose of helping women hygienically manage menstruation, and at the same time, there was no threat to this product because over a period of time, it became a necessity of life. Onkar and Mithila believed in giving back to the society and at the same time generate revenue for their company. Onkar and Mithila needed to make a decision with respect to the distribution structure for Abolee to improve penetration in different rural areas of Maharashtra. Onkar and Mithila needed to strategize to create a remarkable impact in the rural areas. There were multiple challenges that were faced by Abolee, such as: creating awareness about hygienically managing menstruation options among women, ensuring that women consumers continue to use hygienic menstruation management material, creating a preference for Abolee among women consumers and deciding on whether to focus on driving sales through existing channel partners or to invest in finding out alternative avenues for selling “Abolee” in rural areas.

This case study was primarily written for understanding rural marketing aspects of marketing management courses at both the undergraduate level and the postgraduate level. This case study also indicated about the role of gender and its impact on consumer behaviour in rural areas. Although this case study was related to the rural Indian market, it can also be related to other emerging economies.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS8: Marketing.

This case focuses on the issue of additional fleet acquisition by Ispaat Parivahan Limited (IPL) for its contract obligation fulfilment with Solid Steel Limited. As per contract, IPL was to transport overall 15,000 tons per month (tpm) till July 31, 2015 to the North and West. But IPL failed to uphold its part of the contract and fell short of the target for the North. IPL could transport only 12,800 tpm, leading to a penalty payment. To avoid this, the company proposed acquisition of more fleet. One of the issues was additional time due to return loads. The Board wanted IPL to assess scenarios with and without return loads.

After studying and analysing this case, students would be able to evaluate and understand the importance and need of an infrastructure sector in a country, its inherent risks and scope of infrastructure investment and financing in India – National Infrastructure Pipeline and the important role of Non-Banking Finance Company’s (NBFC) vis-à-vis banks in infrastructure financing in India; critically analyse and recommend alternative decisions in a business problem situation using multi-criteria decision analysis, which is a tool used for business portfolio analysis; understand and evaluate the corporate portfolio management (CPM) tools used for an optimum portfolio mix to turn around companies; identify and suggest an optimum portfolio mix to turn around a finance company using CPM assessment applied to Pidun matrix; and recommend operational and strategic levers for successful turnaround implementation by using the integrated canvas on turnaround.

On 10 May 2020, in New Delhi, India, J. Ray took charge as a full-time director of an Indian Non-Banking Finance Company – Infrastructure Finance Company (NBFC-IFC). The NBFC-IFC of the Indian Government extended long-term financial assistance to infrastructure projects in India. During the financial year (FY) 2017–2018 till FY 2019–2020, the company suffered substantial losses to the tune of US$13.7bn, with profitability experiencing a notable decline – return on assets at a negligible 0.11% and return on equity of only 0.68%.

The NBFC-IFC had a declining yield on advances at 7.05%, net interest margins (NIMs) of 2.08% against a high cost of borrowing at 7.66%, a declining loan book (by 4.35%) of US$336.27bn and a fast-deteriorating asset quality with highest ever non-performing assets (NPAs) at 19.70% of its loan book. Such financial parameters, compared with that of the industry average of banks and finance companies, meant that the NBFC-IFC Ray had taken over was fast bleeding and was on the brink of being declared a sick company. In comparison, private and other government players had profitable and much healthier financials, and Ray felt that there was a need for improvement. To make things worse, Ray got to know that the Indian Government was in the final stages of setting up a new development finance institution focused on long-term infrastructure financing in India. Ray realized the question was not only of the NBFC-IFC remaining relevant but also of its existence in the fast-evolving sector. Ray wondered what could his his integrated canvas be for a turnaround strategy that could include effective management of an optimal portfolio mix.

With a healthy capital-to-risk (weighted) assets ratio of 30.85% and a satisfactorily improved net worth of US$103.1bn, in the given Reserve Bank of India regulatory provisions for the NBFC-IFC including restrictive exposure norms and NBFC-IFC’s operational mandate prescribed by the Indian Government, Ray had to shift the product and sectorial investment of the NBFC-IFC to reduce the NPAs, increase loan book size and improve the yield of advances and its NIM to effectively turn around the company’s profitability. Ray realized that he needed his team to evaluate and select a product and sector strategy for this change.

The present case of financing investment in infrastructure is interesting for implementation in developing economies because a lack of infrastructure is a common problem and there is a necessity of achieving a more developed infrastructure system to support accelerated economic growth in these countries. This case can be used in elective courses on corporate finance strategy and corporate portfolio management for infrastructure finance companies. This case can be taught in elective courses in post-graduate and MBA programs. This case can also be included in management development programs (MDP), executive MBA programs and executive-level courses that have subjects such as corporate finance strategy, corporate portfolio management and strategy management that focus on turnaround strategies including portfolio management for banks and finance companies.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.