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After reading the case, the students shall be able to explain the concept of insider trading and differentiate between illegal insider trading and legal insider trading, business ethics, financial institutions, financial markets and accounting; to interpret the legal framework for prevention of insider trading; to identify the role and significance of the market regulator, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), in detecting financial crimes such as insider trading; to demonstrate the association between information, stock trading and stock prices within the framework of efficient markets; and to appraise the ethical dilemma in a family-owned firm, where the family members of the promoter group are alleged to have indulged in a financial crime.

The case revolves around allegations of insider trading against the promoter and the promoter group of the family owned and controlled firm, Lux Industries Limited. On January 24, 2022, the SEBI, the regulator of securities markets in India, accused Udit Todi, the Executive Director of Lux Industries Limited, of engaging in insider trading through a chain of 14 connected parties. Udit Todi was also the son of the Managing Director, Pradip Kumar Todi, and the nephew of the Executive Chairman, Ashok Kumar Todi. In its interim order, SEBI alleged a breach of insider trading regulations by a group of 14 connected entities that had built up long positions starting from May 21, 2021, before the quarterly financial results (Q4) and the annual results of the financial year (FY) 2021 in the equity shares of Lux Industries Limited, with its registered office in Kolkata, India, were announced. Subsequently, they squared off the long positions to make a profit of ₹29.43m. To restore the confidence of the investors, the Executive Chairman, Ashok Kumar Todi, needed to review the matter expeditiously and impartially. Taking into consideration the family ties of the accused, it was not going to be an easy task, yet, it had to be done. The case highlights the role of the regulator, SEBI, in unearthing financial frauds such as insider trading in an emerging market such as India.

Postgraduate programs in management, Executive education programs.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 1: Accounting and Finance

Rendering digital services have taken centerstage in the current ICT for development discourse. E-Government services are mostly under this discourse with the aim to provide citizen centric services in the public domain. Business and development organizations alike are also investing in developing their own digital infrastructure for rendering services to its stakeholders. This case describes scenario in which a cooperative organization wishes to use digital infrastructure and provide digital services to its farmer members. The cooperative continued investing in ICT since the last couple of decades and constantly upgraded it to ease the transaction and bring efficiency and reduce information asymmetry. This had greatly benefitted the members. However, the cooperative is aware that its communication network built on the wireless medium has its own limitations in introducing new services and integrating its databases and applications. The cooperative took note of “Digital India (DI)” initiatives to provide digital services to rural areas and build an ecosystem to empower the citizens in its governance set up. This DI policy has implicit provisions of better networking protocols with improved bandwidth. The organization has a dilemma to continue with investing its own resources or explore possibility of piggybacking on the DI initiative. The cooperative wished to examine the total cost of ownership in either case and assess the feasibility of converging with the infrastructure created by the government.

The Government Information Technology Policies are increasingly favouring citizens and in favour of shared infrastructure and services. It is worth the examination to evaluate strategies to deploy IT infrastructure and services with optimized cost and better returns in an enterprise. This is far more important for a social enterprise like AMALSAD cooperative (user-owned firm) that has deployed its own IT infrastructure and ITeS. AMALSAD cooperative deployed its IT assets long back and in the meanwhile, the Government policy is in favour of providing services over the internet.

The case serves to help students to understand the theoretical concept of Enterprise information systems infrastructure and services. It brings to the students understanding: the drivers of IT infrastructure to provide digital services; challenges that would make the social enterprise (in this case user-owned firm) to understand the opportunities and challenges of deploying the right digital infrastructure and get services on demand. The case presents the scenarios for the students to deliberate and find answers to the right approach for estimating the total cost of ownership (TCO).

The case situation presents a scenario for digital government services. Most of the customer-facing enterprises including social enterprises are also providing digital services. It is important that such services converge at an optimized TCO.

Masters in Business Administration with a concentration in Information Systems.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 7: Management Science.

Entrepreneurship, new venture management, new venture planning.

The case involves various issues within entrepreneurship and the new venture management field such as business model, SWOT analysis, Pros and Cons analysis and challenges faced during the idea commercialization phase. Thus, this case can be used for covering multiple perspectives related to entrepreneurship and new venture planning. This case is useful for discussion in a session on opportunity recognition at ideation stage. This case is also ideal to teach the “Business Model Canvas”, which is fast gaining centre-stage for modern enterprises. The case also covers issues within strategic management such as what actually constitutes a strategy.

The case is based on a field study and primary data collected by interviewing the co-founder of the portal www.drivers420.com. This case describes a situation in which Malkit Singh Bal (Bal) Partner of Bal Road lines shares with Mr Amarpreet Singh (Singh), who was about to be hired as a consultant for Bal Roadlines, information regarding the rise in fraud and crime carried out by fleet drivers and asks him to help him find a solution to the problem.

Prepare a “Business Model Canvas” for the successful operation of business by identifying intended customer segment, value proposition, cost structures and revenue streams. Conduct “Pros and Cons” analysis for starting a business. Conduct “SWOT” analysis for starting a business. Understand what actually constitutes a strategy and understand the five elements constituting strategy.

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.

This case describes a situation in which Malkit Singh Bal (Bal) partner of Bal Roadlines shares with Mr. Ghura, who was about to be hired as consultant for Bal Roadlines, about the rise in issue of fraud and crime done by the fleet drivers and asked him to help a way out to solve the problem. The purpose of this case is to provide an opportunity to the participants of an MBA or Management Executive Education Programme to step into the shoes of Ghura, a consultant and to explore the options and to select the best possible option to offer a solution to Bal. The context for this involvement is the rise in fraud and crime done by the fleet drivers.

The central lesson to be learned from studying the case is to understand the challenges and constraints posed by contextual conditions in designing contracts in public–private partnerships (PPP) for financing and delivering health care in emerging economies such as India.

Perverse incentives, along with contextual conditions, led to extensive opportunistic behaviors among involved agencies, limiting the effectiveness of otherwise highly regarded innovative design of the program.

India’s “Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana” or National Health Insurance Program, launched in 2007 provided free health insurance coverage to protect millions of low-income families from getting pushed into poverty due to catastrophic health-care expenditure. The program was implemented through a PPP using standardized contracts between multiple stakeholders from the public and private sector – insurance companies, hospitals, intermediaries, the provincial and federal government.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS: 10 Public Sector Management.

Greg Mills describes his search for the perfect engagement ring which includes an analysis of the prices of 6,000 diamonds. An engineer, Greg hopes to impress Sarah Staggers by using regression to find an underpriced diamond. Students are asked to either select one of the 6,000 diamonds or provide point forecasts for prices of 3,142 diamonds in a hold-out sample. The instructor can use the actual prices of the held-out diamonds to evaluate student pricing models.

The case presents a lot of information, directly and via references and Web-based links, about the economic consequences of the virus. Several themes are evident: As an opening theory-base, the decades-long stakeholder versus shareholder debate is invoked – but does this extend beyond “stakeholders” to the “public good”? There are contexts (generally wars) in which governments are empowered to instruct private companies to engage in the public good – but how far should/must they voluntarily go? The underlying macro-economic issue is: where will we get the capital? Central banks have not recovered from the 2008 global financial crisis and have limited “ammunition” to address the anticipated economic problems introduced by the virus. The case presents data on selected financial metrics (interest rates, debt levels, risk pricing, etc.) and outlines the conventional stimulatory steps used: lowering short-term rates (monetary policy) and investment in assets (fiscal policy) and the less-conventional Quantitative Easing “QE”.

The coronavirus appears to herald a devastating blow to lives and to the world economy – its impact is yet unknown, but likely to be comparable to war and pestilence of biblical proportion. This case focuses on the possible economic trajectories as a consequence of the virus, with emphasis on bailing-out (restructuring) struggling companies and restoring jobs. Within the framework of a world desperately in need of capital, it raises questions about accountability and responsibility. Should retrenched workers in restaurants, banks and airlines feel the consequences of their poor career choices? Must shareholders (read pensioners) shoulder losses to support the public good? Ought governments bail-out whole industries – using tax-payer money? Or do we allow central banks to conjure-up billions and hope for the best? The case does not attempt to provide answers to these questions but presents several vignettes and offers a context in which participants can debate the merits of these problems.

MBA and Exec-ed.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS: 1 Accounting and Finance.

Hospitality and Tourism.

Senior undergraduate level and graduate level.

This case study charts out the development of a business plan for Ch’ulel Mendoza, a hypothetical all-villa resort nestled against the Andes Mountains, where guests enjoy luxurious wine-infused spa treatments. The business plan has to be comprehensive because it should become the basis of a turnkey project for potential investors. Ch’ulel Mendoza is surrounded by the lush vineyards of some of the most famous wine estates in Argentina. The spa, facilities and services pay homage to the wine-growing heritage of the region, promoting wine to its guests as both pleasurable for consumption and conducive to healthy living. The architectural design speaks directly to the vines themselves: the earth-covered spa is where guests soak up the healing nutrients in the vinotherapy and water treatments, much like the roots are nourished by the elements and water in the soil; the resort area embraces the outdoors with decks, open patios and pools where guests can bask in the sun and enjoy other natural elements, just like the grape plants themselves. Once it becomes operational, Ch’ulel Mendoza will symbolize a blend of wellness, recreation and the charm of the Latin American culture.

Develop a comprehensive business plan for a new business, understand the business environment, prepare a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and weaknesses analysis, develop functional (marketing, finance, human resources, operations, etc.) plans and understand the opportunities and challenges in the new product development process.

CSS: 12: Tourism and Hospitality.

The case focuses on the diamond retailing industry toward the end of 2008, with the United States in an economic downturn. All diamond retailers are hit by the downturn and are facing a critical look at their strategies. Given the basic performance information on Blue Nile, Zales, and Tiffany, students are asked to consider the strengths and weaknesses of each business model with the goal of understanding business models that are better suited to handling a downturn.

The learning objectives of the case are to (1) understand the link between supply chain structure and financial performance, (2) identify key drivers of supply chain performance and how they affect a firm's ability to respond during periods of strong or weak demand, and (3) develop the alignment between supply chain structure and strategic position for a firm.

After completion of the case study, students will be able to evaluate the journey of launching a business in an emerging market context and judge how opportunities and challenges can be navigated to build sustainable enterprises; assess the relevance of individual attributes and process skills that are necessary for entrepreneurial agency to transform social structures through entrepreneurial action; formulate an argument highlighting the role of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in growing a competitive business in an emerging market context; make an informed decision and critique how accelerators and incubators affect the development of ideas and access to finance in South Africa; and propose various strategic options available for technology entrepreneurs, considering the challenges they face in emerging economies.

In April 2023, Queen Ndlovu, CEO and founder of QP Drone Tech, a provider of drone business solutions, was considering options to fulfil her original dream of manufacturing drones in South Africa. She had encountered obstacles to achieving the same in 2019, and had decided to focus on providing commercial drone consulting services. However, her dream had not extinguished, and in 2022, she decided to restart her efforts. She found practical support from The Innovation Hub, an incubator that was supporting her business, which enabled her to enhance the prototype of her drone. She then had to think about how she would manufacture drones locally by ensuring she had access to production infrastructure, funding, partners and customers. Would she be able to gain a competitive advantage that would differentiate her from competitors? Or should she reconsider whether she should be manufacturing in the first place, as there are risks and benefits for smaller businesses in this regard.

This case is intended for discussion in postgraduate diploma in business and Master of Business Administration courses.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.