Chapter 4 - The First Case at IIMA

I walked to CR 5 a few minutes before nine. The classrooms at IIMA are huge square rooms with the desks arranged in four concentric semicircles rising up in an amphitheater sort of layout. Each classroom has two entrances, one on either side of the blackboard. Two aisles go up diagonally from the bottom center of the room to the two far corners.

I ran up the aisle to take my seat on the uppermost row – a swiveling wooden chair mounted on a steel plate bolted to the floor. A short sinewy guy bounded up the stairs and took the seat next to mine. We smiled and introduced ourselves. He was Shirish Kher – a chemical engineer from IIT-Kanpur. Another one! This place was teeming with people from the IITs.

At precisely 9 am, Prof Ravi entered our classroom. About five-foot-six, slightly stocky, and a brisk walker, he quickly scanned the classroom reading our names on the desk placards, sizing us up. He returned to the well of the classroom and wrote his name out on the blackboard. “Welcome,” he said in a thick South-Indian accent. “It is always good to meet bright young people here. Of course we shall soon find out that some of you are – well – not very bright. Sorta – like Type II errors. But we shall handle those cases later. For now, I have to presume that all of you are bright.”

He spoke rapidly, not pausing between sentences. It took a while for us to get used to this. Not only did we have to listen to him carefully to identify the gist of what he was saying, but we also had to figure out on the fly, where he intended the sentence breaks to be.

”My objective today is to introduce to you the case study method that we follow here. Fortunately for you, this case will not be graded. We would not want to start off by seeing so many people get a failing grade.” We all laughed at his joke. Us? Fail? Did he forget that he was addressing some of the brightest young minds in the country? He stared at us as we laughed, and his stare caused us to stop laughing. He was serious.

He walked back to the teacher’s desk and picked up his copy of the case we were going to discuss. The case study method meant that the professors did not ‘waste’ any time teaching us any theory. We were expected to bring our analysis to class. And to defend our choice of course of action and back it up with the theory we had read.

The first case was about a manufacturer of automobile tyres in western India. The case stated that tyres were sold in two ways – Original Equipment (OE) to automobile manufacturers for new vehicles, and Replacement Market – to the retail trade – where vehicle owners bought tyres for replacing their worn out ones. The company was a major supplier to the large auto majors like Maruti Udyog Ltd, Tata Motors and Hyundai Motor Corporation of India among others and OE sales made up the majority of their revenues.

The new CEO of the company, who had been brought in after a very successful stint in a Consumer Durables company, was given the mandate to ensure that their dominance in the OE market was protected over the coming years. And he planned to do that by building a stronger brand and increasing sales in the replacement market. This, argued the CEO, would ensure better top-of-mind recall among consumers when they needed replacement tyres. The case ended by asking us to think about how the company should take this forward.

Most of us had spent a few hours on the case digesting the data provided in the appendices to the case, the manufacturing costs and sales and distribution overheads among other things. We had worked out in detail, the marketing plans for the company and the financial implications of the advertising and distribution budgets for penetrating the replacement market where our brand was relatively unknown.

Prof Ravi looked around the class and asked for a volunteer to begin discussion on the case. Brijesh raised his hand. He sat in the first row, near the blackboard on the professor’s right.

“I would agree with the CEO. The company needs to invest in their brand,” he began. “One way would be to launch a massive campaign on National Television with a budget of Rs 4.80 crores or 48 million.” He went on to describe how he had arrived at that figure. The number of viewers he wished to reach – based on the number of vehicles, the number of spots per week, the cost per 30-second spot on National channels, the duration of the campaign and the expected impact in terms of incremental sales. Prof Ravi nodded eagerly.

....Edited....


I was beginning to appreciate this case study approach. He was asking the right questions, and causing us to think about the issues that matter. This place was already beginning to prove that it could indeed change the way one thinks.

He looked at his watch. I glanced at the clock on the wall behind me. The hour had flown past. It had seemed like minutes. My respect for the case study approach climbed rapidly.

He noticed that some of our faces were rather glum. He had succeeded in making us feel like morons. He decided to be nice to us. Of course Professor Ravi’s way of being nice was to rub it in a little more – but he did it with a little humour. “Look,” he said.” I know you sorta feel like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there.” He smiled as he gave us a minute to absorb the futility alluded to in that rapidly spoken statement. “It is understandable that you feel a little inadequate – especially because of your poor effort at this case. But don’t worry. There are lots of cases to be done and a little bit of time to improve your ‘processing power’. Of course, it is not going to be easy. You will have to work very hard. We know that we will put you under a tremendous workload. You will feel overwhelmed in the beginning. You will not be able to cope. There won’t be enough hours in the day.”
He noticed the looks on our faces. Some were starting to show signs of panic at the thought that he might not be kidding. Others showed obvious disbelief at all this exaggeration.

“We only have a couple of minutes left.” He said as he glanced at his watch. “Let me tell you a story. It is about a guy who goes to visit an astrologer. The astrologer looks at his palm and then his horoscope and then shakes his head sadly. ‘The next few months are going to be worst patch in your life. You will lose all you money and your achievements will be reduced to nothing. Your ego will take a beating and you will lose the respect of others and even your self-esteem.’ The man was shocked. ’That sounds really bad. But you said the next few months. Will the situation improve after those few months?’

Professor Ravi grinned and continued, “ ‘ No. The situation is not going to improve. But within a few months – you will get used to it.”

Some of us laughed. But after our performance on this first case, it was not the hearty laughter of a having heard a good joke. It was the nervous laughter of trepidation.


Next Chapter ... Life in the dorms at IIMA