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Using the case, students will learn about the following topics: identification of the right shareholder for a start-up. Need for a tech co-founder for an app-based start-up. Delay in building the right team at the right time. Lack of preparedness; a start-up’s challenges in identifying the business model. What was the real pain point (problem identification)? Did the solution meet market expectations (solution quality)?; consumers’ usual social habits. How do people’s habits hinder a product’s survival in the market? Why do consumers continue to behave the same way they have? Technology-related constraints.

KnoDues was a mobile application (app)-based start-up in the domain of split expenses. The business idea germinated in early 2015 and became a reality toward the end of 2015. In a developing country context, the case provides rich insights into lean vs traditional start-up formation, founders’ knowledge, opportunity identification, product development and investment. India is a growing economy with ever-increasing smartphone users and internet consumers. Despite its deep-rooted rural-urban divide in the usage of modern technologies, India possesses a vast market opportunity in big cities. Rightly so, KnoDues intended to target the urban youth (between 15 and 35 years of age) population. Although KnoDues was not a unique product or the first of its kind, the founders perceived it to be the “first mover” in the Indian market. In its initial days, the product received an overwhelming response from accelerators and business-plan judges. Although KnoDues achieved more than 20,000 downloads by the end of 2016, customer retention and attracting investors became a difficult task. Founders felt that the difficulty was because of people’s “usual social habits,” and inadequate revenue model. Toward the end of 2017, KnoDues’s founders contemplated on ceasing their business.

Undergraduate, postgraduate and executive.

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CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this study is to examine the cyclical pattern of social expenditure during 1980-2012 for a set of Asian countries. The extant literature available so far has captured the cyclicality of fiscal policy only for member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and for Latin American countries. Moreover, previous studies have largely ignored Asian countries.

The analysis used panel data from global macro-databases of the International Monetary Fund, Statistics of public expenditure for economic development and Asian Development Bank. The cyclical components of social spending (health, education, and social protection) and GDP were determined by using the Hodrick-Prescott Filter. A positive (negative) correlation indicates procyclical (countercyclical) fiscal policy. In line with the existing literature on fiscal cyclicality (Gavin and Perotti, 1997; Lane, 2003; Frankel et al., 2013) that has examined the behavior of fiscal policy over the business cycle, regression analysis is used to examine the impact of political and institutional factors on the behavior of social spending.

It was found that government social expenditure is procyclical across Asian countries during 1980-2012. However, during the past decade, emerging Asian countries have been able to shift from procyclical to countercyclical social spending. This shows that they had taken several initiatives to boost expenditure in the social sector – be it in social protection, health, or education services. The significant determinant of social cyclicality is the quality of institutions, which could help the government to increase fiscal deficit during recessions and repay the debt during economic booms. However, to some extent, their countercyclical action is restrained by the high accumulated level of public debt.

In the context of the Asian region, it is important to understand the cyclical pattern of social policy for several reasons. It has been said that crises offer an opportunity for countries to rethink their social policy to achieve more sustained and equitable development. By studying the social spending behavior, the authors can see whether Asian countries were able to grab the opportunity for reshaping their social and economic agenda after the Asian financial crisis.

The case discussion will help the participants figure out ways the entrepreneur could handle problems such as labour shortage, demonetisation and customer retention and find possible strategies to overcome them.

MVR Leathers is a small-scale leather-processing unit located in Chennai. MVR was the brainchild of Venkat Raj, who started his career in 1982 as a casual labourer in an unrelated domain. His unwavering persistence helped him to become an independent entrepreneur by 2008. In achieving his dream to become an entrepreneur, Raj encountered many challenges and an equal number of new opportunities. Each time he faced a challenge, he met a new set of people who helped him. However, at times, the same people who had helped him once might throw him out of the scene. In brief, his struggle is never-ending. He keeps fighting to come back and find new avenues to success. A different set of challenges surfaced as he took charge of his firm as a sole owner. Once again, he countered those challenges with courage and grit. In doing so, he made full use of his experience.

The case can be used for discussions at the executive, postgraduate and undergraduate levels. Academic courses that address topics such as entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs, small-firm strategies, business environments, leather industry, leadership, human resource management and entrepreneurial journeys can use the case for classroom learning.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

The learning outcomes are as follows: to gain insights into an immigrant community with an emphasis on positioning stakeholders using power, legitimacy and urgency constructs; to help participants dwell on a decision-making process under challenging circumstances; and to help learners understand the level of commitment and efforts needed in initiating and sustaining a volunteer initiative. At the micro level, the case helps learners understand the nature of an interaction between two distinct social groups (ragpickers and volunteers). At the macro level, the case helps the learners understand the way marginalised migratory communities think and behave in the larger scheme of politics, religion and ever-increasing migration at the global level.

This case is about an informal educational activity initiated by a group of volunteers who intend to eradicate illiteracy amongst ragpickers’ children in Rohtak, a small city in Haryana, India. This town has a population of <0.4 million and houses several immigrant families who come from different regions of India. Most immigrant families are into construction and rag picking. The localites mostly perceive ragpickers as undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh. Usually, most ragpickers’ children engage in garbage collection and do not attend school. In this backdrop, a group led by Mohan set up an evening class in an open ground, which in turn attracted several children from both the ragpicker and local communities alike. However, after a few days, the harsh weather made the volunteer team to shift the classes to a closed room. The shifting from the open ground to the closed room infuriated the parents and resulted in the parents not allowing their children to go to school. In this context, the volunteer team has to decide whether to continue the voluntary school or shut it down.

Executive, Under-Graduation and Post Graduation

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CSS 7: Management Science

This paper aims to investigate the factors that determine the performance of small business units using a field survey conducted in a small jewellery cluster in Mangalore district of Karnataka state (India).

The estimates of the median-based quantile regression model are used to analyse how a change in small firm output is determined by seven key factors such as year of establishment, the source of finance, the source of design, lack of demand, design done by the staff, the number of skilled workers, and constraints.

The study finds that the factors such as sources of finance, design, customer relation and skilled manpower are the major determinants of the growth of jewellery business. Based on the findings, the study suggests that the invigoration of business performance by high degree of competitiveness, coupled with technological advancement and hiring of skilled labour, is essential for the sustainability of jewellery units.

The study pinpoints the problems and prospects of traditional business units located in an industrial cluster. Further, it suggests the different ways of strengthening the performance of small business units in India.

A stiffened shell element is presented for geometrically non‐linear analysis of eccentrically stiffened shell structures. Modelling with this element is more accurate than with the traditional equivalent orthotropic plate element or with lumping stiffeners. In addition, mesh generation is easier than with the conventional finite element approach where the shell and beam elements are combined explicitly to represent stiffened structures. In the present non‐linear finite element procedure, the tangent stiffness matrix is derived using the updated Lagrangian formulation and the element strains, stresses, and internal force vectors are updated employing a corotational approach. The non‐vectorial characteristic of large rotations is taken into account. This stiffened shell element formulation is ideally suited for implementation into existing linear finite element programs and its accuracy and effectiveness have been demonstrated in several numerical examples.

This study seeks to develop the concept of technological embeddedness by extending the social embeddedness theory of economic actions to household computer adoption. It also aims to propose a research framework in which technological embeddedness is a key factor that influences household computer adoption.

The US 1989‐2003 Computer and Internet Use Supplements to the Current Population Surveys are used to validate the proposed research framework.

The results show that technological embeddedness positively affects household computer adoption. In addition, the impact of technological embeddedness is positively moderated by household income, and this impact is particularly stronger on first‐time buyers than on repeat buyers.

The results provide important policy and managerial implications for encouraging household computer adoption and bridging the digital divide.

The paper proposes a new concept and develops a research framework for analyzing household computer adoption and technology adoption in general.

Gives a bibliographical review of the finite element methods (FEMs) applied for the linear and nonlinear, static and dynamic analyses of basic structural elements from the theoretical as well as practical points of view. The range of applications of FEMs in this area is wide and cannot be presented in a single paper; therefore aims to give the reader an encyclopaedic view on the subject. The bibliography at the end of the paper contains 2,025 references to papers, conference proceedings and theses/dissertations dealing with the analysis of beams, columns, rods, bars, cables, discs, blades, shafts, membranes, plates and shells that were published in 1992‐1995.

Using features of social media, peer-to-peer (P2P) mobile payment enables users to foster social interaction every time transactions are made. Given the increasing popularity of social features in P2P mobile payment applications, it is worth understanding how these components contribute to users’ switching behavior between conventional mobile payment and P2P mobile payment services. By treating sociability of P2P mobile payment as a pull factor, this study aims to extend the push–pull–mooring framework in the context of P2P mobile payment.

A questionnaire survey was conducted to obtain data. Respondents from the USA were exclusively selected due to the emerging number of P2P mobile payment users and the volume of transactions in this country. Based on a sample of 232 Amazon Mechanical Turk mobile payment users, the authors tested the hypotheses using the partial least squares structural equation model technique with SmartPLS software version 3.

The finding reveals that sociability is triggered by social presence, social benefit and social support within the P2P mobile payment platform. Moreover, dissatisfaction with perceived enjoyment of conventional mobile payment (push factor), customer innovativeness (mooring factor) and sociability of P2P mobile payment (pull factor) jointly influence users’ intention to switch to P2P mobile payment services, and subsequently drive their migration behavior.

Unlike past research that mainly focuses on utilitarian-related factors, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to thoroughly examine the sociability features of P2P mobile payment service as a form of a social-centric system.

This paper explores how financial technology (FinTech) organisations address poverty-related challenges when providing digital financial services. Employing the conceptual foundation of the liability of poorness (i.e. literacy gaps, a scarcity mindset, intense non-business pressures and a lack of financial slack), this paper explores the innovative strategies that FinTechs use to address these liabilities and promote entrepreneurship.

The paper uses detailed case data collected from three FinTech organisations operating in one South Asian country.

FinTech organisations' innovative strategies reflect a combination of “high touch” (human) vs “low touch” (digital) solutions. All the organisations simplified internal systems or procedures to accommodate customers. The degree to which the three organisations adopted each of the identified strategies shows an emerging typology of FinTechs; that is, innovators with high digital interactions, a mix of digital-human interactions and high human interactions.

The paper develops a typology which categorises FinTech innovative strategies. The typology highlights strategies pro-poor FinTechs use and explains the types of entrepreneurial support innovative organisations provide for their customers. Both the typology and the innovative strategies contribute to enhanced financial inclusion and entrepreneurial promotion amongst the poor.

The originality of the paper comes from its focus on FinTechs' innovative pro-poor strategies. Existing studies typically address the technology-side of innovations. In contrast, this paper combines innovative strategies with the liability of poorness to identify issues associated with financial inclusion.