Entrepreneurial case

Documenting an entrepreneurial case will help understand the life story of an entrepreneur and
the challenges faced by entrepreneurs.

1. Select an entrepreneur from your acquaintance from any of the following mentioned
below,
 Industry - Clean technology, real estate, telecom, education, IT, media, and entertainment
amongst others
 Types of entrepreneurs – Franchisee, group, woman, social, niche venture, serial,
propagator or hustle
 Stages of growth - Incubatee current or in the past, seed funded
2. Collect data and information by interviewing the entrepreneur, visiting his/ her
workplace, talking to other stakeholders such as customers, employees, etc.
3. Find out about his / her family, social, educational background, how the business idea
was generated, startup strategies, finances, main hurdles in setting up the business, how
did he / she manage to pull out resources?
4. Contribution in terms of innovations, services, new products, new market, alignment of
different ideas to the customer, employees, society amongst others
5. One major challenge faced in the last one year, how s/he resolved it and the decision
taken
6. Areas could be, Marketing, operations, HR, finance & IT, leadership, succession
planning, networking amongst others
7. It could be a maximum of 20 pages including exhibits, it will be submitted as a word doc
in Times new roman, font size 12, single spacing with the group no & the roll nos. no
names as a footer in serial order as per attendance sheet. A cover page is not required.
8. A letter would need to be obtained from the start up/venture, asking for their acceptance
to publish the case.
9. Some examples of an entrepreneurial decision are ,
 To determine which sources of funding to use
 To chose between becoming an entrepreneur or joining an organization
 To decide whether to start up alone or set up a team
 To price the product high or low
 To determine the revenue model
 To make or buy
 To determine the business model on revenue generation

Session6 Submission 1of case – 5 marks

1. Permission letter from the entrepreneur
2. Name of the venture
3. Small introduction: Just an intro about the unit & the case issues.
4. Intro to Xyz group: Enough material about group and its growth.
5. Intro to Xyz Locks
6. About the group: Starting till now
7. Brand image in market
 8. Organizational charts
9. Financial performance
10. Change of focus from locks to solution
11. Manufacturing being shifted to Goa
12. Decision you will focus on

Submission 2 of case in session 8 - 5 marks

1. Product range & application
2. Classification (will be referring to the table in exhibit)
3. Reference to the pictures of locks
4. Indian lock industry
5. Dominated by unorganized players: Low cost because of least technology, no tax paying,
Aligarh & Dindugal
6. Small scale industry regulation
7. Back door entry by MNC’s
8. Competition in organized sector
9. Distribution & Supply chain
10. Distribution structure
11. Tax structure
12. Sales traced only form till warehouse & not till retailer
13. High inventory due to fluctuation in sales (refer to Chennai example)
14. Transportation system: primary & secondary
15. Logistics: Xyz versus third party, subsidizing for sister concern at the cost of flexibility
16. Information flow BaaN, web also used but not effectively
17. Demand forecasting
18. Process of demand forecasting explained
19. Lack of scientific approach highlighted
20. Production
21. Process involved in lock mfg in brief: with shop floor diagram & process chart
22. Different assembly lines and their capacity ( from exhibit)
23. Production planning & scheduling explained
24. Mismatch between planned production & execution explained
25. Conclude saying that vendors & component supply drives the schedule
26. Dispatch decision
27. Basically explaining the lack of coordination between demand estimation, production
planning and dispatch which leads to very high inventory in state warehouses. If the
inventory cushion provided in state warehouses are reduced, the system can be converted
to pull system

Submission 3 of case in session 10 -5 marks

28. Challenges
 29. Shifting mfg to Goa: how good is the move?
30. Xyz logistics is adding value or create nuisance?
31. Mismatch between demand forecasting, production planning, execution and dispatch
decision
32. Vendor management: Critical to this problem
33. Regional players: how to tackle them, brands like freedom & shakti, implications of
VAT, small scale industry, regulation
34. Competition from foreign players: Xyz’s strategy, effect on price premium enjoyed at
present
35. Is it worthwhile continuing to manufacture locks or outsource entire mfg and do only
marketing?
36. Is it worthwhile being in locks business? How critical is it to Xyz group?

Submission 4 (Last & final) of case in session 12 -5 marks

37. Exhibits
38. Organizational chart – overall mktg , mfg
39. Financial performances
40. Product classification
41. Product photos
42. Supply chain of mfd products and imported products
43. Sales & inventory of an SKU at Chennai warehouse
44. Capacity of assembly lines
45. Shop floor diagram revisited
46. Production schedule sheet
47. Process flow from vendor till warehouse
48. Sales, branch stock, factory stock, estimated production & actual production for a fast
moving, medium and a slow moving SKU