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To understand how beauty and wellness business is run by women entrepreneurs in India and to understand the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs in India.

Nikita Patel is an women entrepreneur from a small town called Indore in India. She wanted to run a spa business and started a mobile spa venture called “Atheeva” to offer spa services. However, her venture ran into trouble because of objections from male members in the family and due to feeling of insecurity among her female staff members. She had to close down Atheeva after running the business unit for eight months. Undaunted by the failure, she again started a new venture called “Fingertips” to offer Nail Spa services. This time she took the help of digital marketing to promote her business and started spreading her business into different cities through franchisee route. However, she again faced headwinds in business due to rising attrition rates and challenges of maintaining work-life balance. This case covers the journey of a women entrepreneur as she faces multiple challenges and overcomes them and seeks answers to the path she should take to take her business to the next trajectory of growth.

Gives strategic insight of challenges faced by Women Entrepreneurs in India.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

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 outcomes of this paper is as follows: to identify unique selling points of a growing business for attaining competitive advantage; to understand the role of segmentation for Wellness Zone Headmasters (WZH); to explore different strategic choices for successful expansion of business; to help students understand the concept of customer satisfaction in a competitive industry; and to understand the importance of differentiation as a major deciding factor for the future of a business.

In March 2020, Kumud Goel, one of the directors of WZH, a chain of wellness spa and salon in Jammu and Kashmir (India), was considering different marketing strategies to grow her existing business. The company had opened two new outlets in the past two years and was looking at increasing its customer base. Kumud was concerned about keeping her customers satisfied in a highly competitive industry. She was aware that differentiation was critical for future growth. In what ways could WZH differentiate itself from its competitors at a time when the market was exploding? Could customer segmentation be the solution? What measures would WZH need to take to increase its repeat customers?

The case is appropriate for use in a 90-min class in a Masters in Business Administration-level management course and for undergraduates, especially marketing majors and in a module on marketing strategy and customer value.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

The learning outcomes of this paper is as follows: to showcase how a futuristic mission and planned branding initiatives can help start-up social enterprise to create a successful brand; to explain how a comprehensive understanding of the target group and innovative products/services and channel strategies help GoBhaarati position itself as an upcoming not for profit social enterprise; to argue how proper brand mission and branding can help even a small startup to create a brand identity in a fiercely competitive fragmented market dominated by big players; the constraints GoBhaarati faced in constituting and aligning distribution channel. These impulsions can have legal, environmental and or managerial foundations.

GoBhaarati Agro Industries and Private Limited (GoBhaarati) operated as a nonprofit social enterprise in the Health and Wellness Industry, providing natural indigenous traditional Indian products such as millets, honey, turmeric, jaggery, rock salt and serving millet-based snacks to consumers. At the epicenter of Gobhaarati's branding strategy was its health and wellness positioning. The company's mission was to increase the positive perception of millets and to convince consumers that there was intrinsic value in a product's origin and production processes. Iriventi aimed to achieve a turnover of at least ten crores by 2025, but the company's sales and financial resources were limited. With this clouding in mind, Iriventi could not decide whether to let GoBhaarati stay niche in business or to expand it organically.

Graduate and executive management education students can use the case. The case may also be used to focus on entrepreneurship and distribution management for start-up social enterprises.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

Marketing Management, Product & Brand Management, Entrepreneurship.

This case can be taught effectively to MBA/BBA students as part of Marketing Management, Product & Brand Management, Entrepreneurship.

The case talks about the marketing mix strategy of India’s fastest growing fast moving consumer goods (FMCGs) brand Patanjali, with a tremendous revenue growth rate of 100 per cent for the past five years, leaving major FMCG companies insomniac. Patanjali Ayurved Limited riding on Baba Ramdev’s brand equity positioned itself as an authentic Ayurved brand with ancient Indian roots. Patanjali’s product line ranges from healthcare, personal care, home care, to food and more. Patanjali’s products were priced 10-40 per cent lower than that of its competitors. Run by franchisees, Patanjali had a three-tier distribution system. These included Patanjali Chikitsalayas which were franchise dispensaries and clinics along with doctors, Patanjali Arogya Kendra which were health and wellness centres and Swadeshi Kendra, non-medicine outlets. The company has 15,000 exclusive outlets across India and plans to grow to 1,00,000 exclusive outlets by 2020. Patanjali amazed the world by achieving phenomenal success without spending much on advertising in its nascent stage. Recently Patanjali adopted the multinational corporation (MNC) style of advertising by hiring two top advertising agencies McCann and DDB Mudra to prepare the company for the next phase of growth. Patanjali diversified into various segments of the market, ranging from FMCG products, Ayurvedic medicines, Ayurvedic hospitals and a medical college. Patanjali plans to enter various categories of products including the beauty products segment to compete with major MNCs, the baby care segment to compete with Johnson & Johnson, and the sports segment to compete with Nike and Adidas. Patanjali as a brand has a strong positioning in the minds of consumers as a natural and Ayurvedic brand. Will Patanjali’s foray into so many diversified segments lead to a brand extension trap and confused positioning? Because Patanjali as a brand, solely rides on Baba Ramdev’s image, if Baba Ramdev ever finds himself at the centre of a controversy, will Patanjali’s brand equity take a hit? Will it affect the brand Patanjali? Even if Baba Ramdev does not get into any controversy, what will happen to the brand Patanjali when Baba Ramdev is no more? Who should be the next face of Patanjali? Can the brand survive without a face?

The case is designed to enable students to understand the following key learning points: The concept of marketing mix. Product mix, Promotion mix branding (especially “Person as a Brand”), customer-based brand equity (CBBE) model or brand resonance pyramid.

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.

Competitive strategy.

Post-Graduate (MBA/Doctoral) level courses.

This paper aims to examine the evolution of Himalaya Drug Company (hereinafter referred to as Himalaya), an Ayurveda-based pharmaceutical-wellness company. Over the eight decades of its history, Himalaya has built a reputation for Ayurveda-based formulations that conform to allopathic standards and are accepted globally. In the recent years, Himalaya dramatically strengthened its competitive position of “scientific Ayurvedic products” through its entry into fast-moving consumer goods (or consumer-packaged goods), categories of wellness products as well as over-the-counter (non-prescription) drugs. This case describes the focused differentiation strategy of Himalaya and sets out the challenges it faced/would face in sustaining its focused differentiation strategy, as it enters into highly penetrated categories such as toothpastes and soaps (that were traditionally dominated by broad differentiators and broad cost leaders).

The outcomes are as follows: to exemplify the logic of focused differentiation, where a competitor commands a higher willingness to pay than its average competitors, by narrowing its target segments; to illustrate how the firm’s entire set of activities are tailored to meet the specific needs of a set of carefully chosen products, narrow customer segments, of defined geographic markets; to highlight how a combination of tradeoffs and fit helps protect the firm’s competitive position from its potential imitators; and to demonstrate the limits of a focused strategy, specifically relating to growth, and how a company such as Himalaya can overcome such limits.

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.

By working through the case and assignment questions, students will be able to conduct a marketing environmental analysis to aid strategic decisions; analyse the first-mover advantages of a retail firm and how these can be sustained; comprehend online retail business models and the challenges therein; understand the trade-offs of online/offline retail experiences specific to an emerging market’s beauty and personal care sector; conceptualize and formulate actionable growth strategies that balance the individual and collective requirements of brick and mortar and retail e-commerce environments.

The case is set in 2022, right after Nykaa – the pioneer of beauty and wellness e-commerce platforms in India makes a blockbuster stock market debut in 2021. Starting in 2012 with a disruptive online model for selling beauty and wellness products online in India, Nykaa had come a long way with expansions in physical retail and other segments such as fashion. The firm, which initially aimed to be a virtual store, is now thinking of aggressively expanding in the brick-and-mortar retail space as it opens its 85th retail outlet.

Falguni S. Nayar, founder and CEO of Nykaa, wanted to roll out 300 physical stores targeting 100 cities in India in the next couple of years. She aspired to establish Nykaa as a category leader as the “Indian Sephora” in the beauty and personal care market. Nykaa’s first-mover advantage in the online beauty and personal care marketplace worked well to establish it as a brand with positive endorsements by digital shoppers that enhanced the investment potential with potential financiers. However, the pandemic had brought every physical retailer to the online platform. Most e-commerce platforms dealing in grocery to lifestyle had added personal care products to their existing merchandise.

Additionally, several start-ups had ventured into the online marketplace. Online was a cluttered marketplace with little to no differentiation. In this bloodbath, would the first-mover advantage for Nykaa in the online space still count as a competitive advantage? Nayar was all set to expand Nykaa’s physical presence aggressively. The concern was that the beauty and personal care segment had also moved online as a function of long stay-at-home periods. In the post-pandemic times, would the customer indeed revert to brick and mortar once again? Nykaa was also into product formulations, but so was every big and small player in the space. What was the differentiated winning formula for the consumer’s heart and mind?

The case can be effectively used in foundation courses in marketing and a wide range of specialized courses on marketing management (core/foundation course), retail marketing and e-commerce/digital marketing and e-commerce for B-school learners. The complex decision points faced by an innovative e-commerce start-up firm on its road to market expansion make the case suitable for niche courses such as Marketing for Start-ups. Moreover, learners in executive MBA programs with considerable experience can benefit from the case analysis that balances a growing retail company’s long- and short-run objectives.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

Entrepreneurship; Strategy.

The case is meant for Undergraduate and Postgraduate students pursuing entrepreneurship and management with specializations in strategy. It can be also used for Entrepreneurship and Management Development programs for generating an insight into strategic planning, organic growth of enterprise and the formulation of a future road map. The case can be used in courses like “strategic management”, “female entrepreneurship” and specialization courses like “Start-up: Ideation, Launching, Managing and Growth”.

Simran Sahni and Sachin Sahni, the owner and co-founders of health, beauty and slimming center are currently running centers in Lucknow and Ludhiana. Although as of now there is no operational franchisee provided by Health Zone in any of the other cities across the country, the owners have a vision to open around 100 franchised and company owned centers across the country. At this juncture, both the co-founders, who also happen to be husband and wife, look forward to understanding and revisiting the operations and strategies at Health Zone to formulate the road map for the future.

The participants will be able to identify key challenges for service organizations and will learn ways to meet these challenges. The participants will be able to identify motivation and retention strategies applied by the co-owners in their organization. The participants will be able to have an insight on the key elements of the Business Model of a service organization based in the wellness industry. The participants will be able to analyze the opportunities available for new startups in the wellness industry drawing their conclusions from experiences and business development and expansion of Health Zone in its overall journey. Participants will be able to devise models for the enterprise so as to help it grow and expand its operations nationally.

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.

The case study offers a unique teaching tool to the instructor and learners. Very few cases offer a product and segmentation dilemma in a single problem. The discussion would enable learners to:

– conduct a situational analysis by using frameworks such as the 5C and SWOT;

– understand different kinds of segmentation options that a firm can consider;

– understand the nuances of making a viable and actionable new product launch decision;

– analyze the pros and cons of a segmentation decision and comprehend how the decision will impact the firm’s marketing and/or business strategy.

Sirona Hygiene Private Limited was a young startup founded in 2015 by Deep Bajaj. The firm had three brands under its umbrella, namely, female hygiene (Peebuddy), menstrual hygiene (Sirona) and protection and wellness (BodyGuard). Though the firm was recognized for feminine hygiene products, the pandemic boosted the sale of BodyGuard face masks and hand sanitizers.

The sanitizer market was growing, and protection and sanitization products were now part of every consumer’s daily ritual. As BodyGuard now had some brand recognition, Sirona could consider expanding the sanitizer line with a natural new product formulation. However, the expansion decision could have short- and long-term impacts on BodyGuard and Sirona Hygiene. The decision could be two-pronged, involving a product line expansion and revisiting the BodyGuard segmentation strategy. Currently, the BodyGuard range was focused on business-to-consumer (B2C) users, but volumes were higher in business-to-business (B2B). Second, BodyGuard was a forced fit brand amongst the Sirona family of feminine products

Thus, as Sirona considered a new product opportunity, assessing the viability of a possible move to the B2B segment may be prudent. However, the BodyGuard range also had mosquito repellents and baby products, which were essentially a B2C option, so was it more practical to stay as a B2C brand? Furthermore, if BodyGuard stayed a B2C brand, should it consider a demographic segmentation, or was a psychographic approach more beneficial in a cluttered commoditized space such as sanitizers? Which approach would build a consumer–brand connection? Or should the brand straddle both segments? Finally, the firm would also need to assess the BodyGuard segmentation strategy from the overarching Sirona business strategy.

The case can be used for a foundation course in Marketing and/or an advanced elective on Product Management or Marketing Strategy.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

The case helps to understand: the working mechanisms of a digitized salon service, with a focus on the lower- and middle-income strata. The changing scenario of the service marketing model, with the growth in digital service models. To investigate the organisational challenges of a digitally facilitated/based start-up and find solutions to overcome the challenges.

“Yes Madam”-salon at home was a business enterprise, providing beauty and wellness services at the doorstep through a mobile application and web-based platform. The case describes the reason for opening the doorstep beauty services, its revenue model and aims to provide quality services to lower- and middle-income strata. The case will help students to understand the working mechanism of digitized salon services and associated challenges; prominent ones being attracting, selecting and retaining the beauticians and providing the standardised services. The case has examined the low-price services for the consumers delivered by the company. The case also discussed their plans for diversification and penetration into the untapped markets.

Graduates and postgraduates.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.