On September 4, ISB and Ivey Business School announced the results of the annual ISB-Ivey Global Case Competition. The case “Price or Relationship: SECURENOW'S Dilemma” co-authored by Ms Ripsy Bondia and Dr Ashutosh Dash, faculty at Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, won the top prize of US $4000.
The competition received 86 entries from more than 50 B-schools in India, the United States, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates. The cases spanned a wide spectrum of management areas, from more traditional subjects such as Strategy, Marketing, Finance and Leadership, to growing areas of interest such as, Social Enterprise and Business Ethics. Prof Leslie Hitch and Prof Shreshthi Mehta from Northeastern University, Boston won the second place. Winner in Marketing category was a case authored by Prof Srividya Raghavan of IFIM Business School, Apurva Chamaria and Gaurav Kakkar of HCL technologies. The winner in Entrepreneurship category was a case authored by Prof Rajesh Panda, Madhvi Sethi and Pooja Gupta of SIBM, Bengaluru.
Each case was independently evaluated in a double blind review process by a senior management faculty from a panel of B-schools comprising ISB, Ivey, XLRI, TISS, CEIBS, Wharton, Babson College and IIM-C among others. The top cases from the competition are put through an extensive program of multiple reviews and mentoring and eventually published as ISB-Ivey co-branded cases by Ivey Publishing, the largest source of Indian business cases in the world.
CASE SYNOPSIS
“Price or Relationship: SECURENOW'S Dilemma”
Ripsy Bondia and Ashutosh Dash
Management Development Institute, Gurgaon
This case is about SecureNow, a firm which set-up the first online B2B insurance marketplace in India in 2011. Within 18 months of its operations, SecureNow achieved its first cash operational breakeven calculated on a month to month basis. With help of algorithmic models, SecureNow consistently helped its clients reduce their insurance cost up to 20%. By the end of 2013, the firm was getting business through various channels like Online, Partnerships, Inbound and Outbound. Kapil Mehta, founder of SecureNow, could see the potential for high future growth and tried to explore different financing alternatives to scale up the business.
lthough the Series-A investors expressed interest in SecureNow, but only at a larger scale. In his meetings with angel investors, Kapil reinforced the importance of ‘relationship’ element along with pecuniary benefits while getting an investor on board. Finally in April 2014, one of Mehta’s classmates, appreciating his philosophy expressed interest to invest in SecureNow at a valuation of Rs. 57 million. This was much lower than Mehta’s expected valuation of Rs. 500 million. Mehta wondered how he and his classmate, arrived at such varied valuations. He was in dilemma whether to accept funds at such low valuation for the ‘relationship’ element of an investor, or should he put in additional capital to fund the expansion or should he just postpone the expansion plans. The case is suitable for a MBA course in entrepreneurial finance and business valuation techniques, especially valuation of start-ups. It could also be used in an executive program on general management or entrepreneurial finance or business valuation for middle-level and senior level management.
Dr Ashutosh Dash is a member of finance faculty at MDI and has both Commerce and Business Administration degrees with finance specialization. He also holds a doctorate degree in Mergers & Acquisitions from Utkal University¸ Bhubaneswar. He has pursued his Faculty Development Programme from Indian Institute of Management (IIM)¸ Ahmedabad.
Ms Ripsy Bondia is currently pursuing Fellow Program in Management from MDI. She has worked with IL&FS Infrastructure Development and research unit of McKinsey & Company before joining academics. She holds a Bachelors in Finance and Investment Analysis from College of Business Studies and qualified UGC-Net and JRF conducted by UGC.
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